Wrapup: Google election info

Tomorrow, Americans across the country will vote (or finish voting), and we want you to find as much information as you'd like concerning this historic 2008 election. Here are three steps for getting the full scoop:

1) Get informed
To use Google tools that will help inform you before you cast your vote, visit our 2008 Election site. Watch campaign videos on YouTube, catch a glimpse of the best political map mashups -- including historical voting results -- on Google Maps, see what the candidates had to say via these In Quotes and Audio Indexing tools, and add the Presidential Candidates gadget to your iGoogle page.

2) Vote
Find out where to vote on our U.S. Voter Info site (on your mobile phone, head to m.google.com/elections). We hope your boss has given you at least an hour off to vote, and if you're so inclined, bring a video camera with you to the polls to capture your voting experience on YouTube's Video Your Vote channel. We're using Google Maps to track these videos across the country -- and to see where polling problems might be occurring during the day. In addition, we're featuring all political videos on the homepage - including videos made especially for Election Day by both the McCain and Obama campaigns.

3) Watch results
On the front page of Google News, you'll find a Google Map showing real-time popular and electoral vote counts. And we'll be providing results from the presidential, Senate, House, and gubernatorial races as they are reported by the Associated Press.

On the Elections section page, you can see more detailed results. At the top of the righthand column there are summaries of the presidential race and the races for majority control in the Senate and House (beneath the summaries you can select a state in the pull-down menu). For each state we display the breakdown in votes for the presidency, governor (where there is a race), and for each Senate and House seat that's up.

You can also access news and results as they occur on the Google Maps Elections Gallery (you can even embed the results onto your own site), or via the Elections section of Google News. Finally, you can follow the presidential election and see a summary of the popular and electoral votes by visiting news.google.com on your iPhone or Android mobile phone.

Update: Added new features available on Google News.

Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Google Elections Team