Core77

The 1HDC Voting Booth Challenge is in full swing, and is already turning out to have a little different flavor than past incarnations. Maybe it's the fact that designers, too, have voting on the brain lately, or the strong feelings that get ramped up as an election approaches, but some of the early entries have more commentary in them than we're used to seeing--and that's a good thing.

Starting at the top: Yo's thumbprint-reading, vote-from-anywhere web-based system; jknodell's converted shipping container voting station (complete with staff uniforms); and personpeoples4444's booth with an integrated mirror, designed to encourage self-examination while completing your ballot.

Then something a little more aggressive: sdcrosla suggests dunking both candidates in water-filled boxes and supplying them with oxygen at the rate of one bubble per vote.

At the bottom is a detail from TheMunesterOfPortSalut's vision of voting station as ice cream truck, or maybe carnival: Mr. Democracy rolls into town blasting classic Schoolhouse Rock songs about civic duty, and is staffed by helpful volunteers in Uncle Sam costumes who feed you patriotic ice cream bars when you're done.

Think you can do better? The competition's open until 9pm on October 30th, and winning entries will be selected by Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel of Winterhouse, creators of the Polling Place Project.

>>See all entries, and upload your own.<<

If you still need inspiration, we've included a couple more designerly responses to the current campaign after the jump.

From GOOD magazine, candidate contributions expressed as NASCAR-style endorsement patches:

And via swissmiss, an interactive map from DVICE.com summarizing the relative hackability of the voting systems in various states: