Google offers its maps to help voters find polling places

As Election Day nears, Google Inc. has created a Web site to help voters find the location of their polling places by typing in an address and clicking a search button.

In an announcement Wednesday on Google's blog, the new mapping service was launched to assist voters who might skip the Nov. 4 election because they didn't know where to vote.

"It's hard to believe that in 2008, information so important to U.S. citizens and the democratic process isn't well organized on the Web," said the blog entry posted by J.L. Needham, a member of Google's public-sector content partnerships department, and Abe Murray, a Google product manager. "To solve this problem, we've released our U.S. Voter Info site, an effort to simplify and centralize voting locations and registration information."

The site uses Google Maps and allows a visitor to enter an address and get results that provide the location of the voter's polling place.

The map site was created by Google Maps in partnership with state and local election officials, the Voting Information Project, the League of Women Voters and others, according to Google.

Mobile phone users can get the same information by going to m.google.com/elections or searching for the word vote with their addresses on Google Maps for Mobile.

Google also offers the mapping site code for free to groups that want to include it on their Web sites, according to the company.

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