48 hours left, six ways to help

Update, January 14: please see Act now: 30 hours left in Ideas for Change in America for updated instructions.

The momentum shift I hoped for yesterday may be starting to happen.  After dropping to #9 last night (“Will you still love me if we don’t make the top 10?” I asked Deborah),  Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties is now back up to #8 with 8050 votes.  Even more importantly, the cushion of votes keeping us in the top ten* — probably the most important number to watch — climbed from 1200 to 1500.  Go us!

We got several blog posts, endorsements, and mailings from Facebook group admins.  Thanks all!  We are still trailing badly in endorsements, with only 22 so far — Pass the DREAM Act – Support Higher Education for All Students, which is right behind us at #10 has 67, and some ideas have over 300.  So let’s redouble our blogger outreach efforts** — and at the same time, not rely on this changing and continue to reach out via email on Facebook.  Mail your family and friends!  Change your status!  Change your image!***  Post this link!  Instructions here!

Our voting thread on whether we should endorse Bob Fertik’s Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush Administration has gotten 22 votes: 20 yes, 1 no, 1 present (me, since I voted first and didn’t want to bias things).  If you haven’t weighed in yet, please do.

More ways to help below, but first a few paragraphs about strategy.

Over the last 48 hours, people are likely to change their votes as they drop ideas that have very little chance.   Especially if Bob’s idea starts to surge based on the early returns implying a likely endorsement, we may also see other endorsements and other  kinds of alliances between ideas.   Blog posts can probably have a significant impact as late as Thursday morning, and the same for digg campaigns; so it’s still fairly easy for ideas to move up.

A real wild-card is that people are having a hard time voting.  I moved the instructions up to the second paragraph of our idea … other suggestions welcome.  And when the load on change.org’s servers increases, it gets a lot harder.  In the extreme.  Suppose an idea makes Slashdot, Wired, and the New York Times simultaneously and ripples out through the tech and progressive blogospheres simultaneously; will change.org be able to keep up with the load,and if not, what percentage of people will re-vote?  We shall see …

As you get a few moments of time over the next few days, here’s how you can help.

1. vote for the idea if you haven’t already.  Please double-check that your vote has counted: you should see a brown “voted” button at the top of the change.org page.  If not, see the instuctions here.
2. Steve Elliot’s Get FISA Right: Last Chance To Vote Against Domestic Spying now up to 221 votes on digg.  Digg it!
3. email your friends and family, and any mailing lists you think might be interested.  Think creatively.  For example I’m thinking of sending mail to my brother saying “activating Pincii!” and asking him to forward it on to an extended family email list.
4. help with the blogger outreach
5. change your status, post and share this link, and get involved on Facebook

Thanks much!

jon

* more precisely, the difference between our idea and the #11 idea.  see, all those hours reading Nate on 538 are turning out to be useful!

**  In case anybody’s wondering, neither Bruce Schneier or OpenLeft have responded to my mail yet.  Oh well.

*** Thanks to Thomas for these suggestions!