We're asking Iowans to join us in an experiment to see if the Internet can provide faster, better results on the night of the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses.

During your caucus, we're asking you to use Twitter to send a text message with the results of your caucus as soon as they are announced. We'll be tallying the reported results from the Democratic and Republican Caucuses and posting them live.

For the Democrats, this will help us to crack open an opaque reporting process where raw vote totals aren't known by reporting estimated pre-"viability" support from caucusgoers themselves.

*** EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT IN IOWA, you can join this group and invite all your Iowa friends. ***

1. Sign up for Twitter (twitter.com), a micro-blogging service that allows you to tell everyone what you're doing -- and report useful information around you.

2. Follow our Twitter user by going to http://twitter.com/iowacaucus or issuing a Twitter message saying "follow iowacaucus."

3. If you're an Iowa caucusgoer who pledges to send in results, send us a direct message via Twitter and we will "follow" you. This enables us to automatically get your updates.

4. On Caucus day or before, allow Twitter to send text messages to and from your phone. Go to "notifications" in Twitter's right sidebar, enter your mobile phone numbe, tick off the checkbox, and follow the remaining instructions. If you'd like to receive text messages from our "iowacaucus" user (with results and updates) make sure you're following us and Notifications are turned on when you go to our Twitter page (twitter.com/iowacaucus)

Standard text rates apply, and you'll probably want to turn this off once the Caucus is done, but reporting via text message is the easiest way to share your results with us, as well as for us to share statewide results with you.

5. On Caucus night, send Twitter a text message at 40404 with your results once they are known. Prefix your message with "@iowacaucus" so we'll know to pick it up and make sure to have the word "caucus" in the message just to be safe. Give us some indication of were you are -- preferably a specific caucus location but if that's too long, your city/town will do just fine.

We'll be coming up with a guide to keeping your messages as short as possible (you're limited to 140 characters or less), but possible message formats include:

@iowacaucus. indianola caucus. huck 56, mitt 52, fred 28, rudy 13, mccain 10, paul 8, hunter 3.

@iowacaucus. west des moines high. 1st round. o56, c52, e28, r13, b10, d8, k3

(Where o=obama, c=clinton, e=edwards, r=richardson, b=biden, d=dodd, k=kucinich)

Because the Democratic caucus will go on beyond the first ballot, we want you to keep reporting to us -- even anecdotes.

Join us in this innovative experiment in American democracy today! (read less)

We're asking Iowans to join us in an experiment to see if the Internet can provide faster, better results on the night of the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses.

During your caucus, we're asking you to use Twitter to send a text message with the results of your caucus as soon as they are announced. We'll be tallying the reported results from the Democratic and Republican Caucuses and posting them live.

For the Democrats, this will help us to crack open an opaque reporting process where raw... (read more)