When I became eligible for voting or even before that, I can remember that elections were a grand affair. The political parties put up graffiti on all the walls that they could find on the street, stuck posters everywhere and hire auto-rickshaws (three wheeler vehicles) & taxis with announcements coming from the loudspeakers attached. After the election commissioner banned this, the walls remained clean. I also remember the long ballot paper & the stamp that one has to carefully put on the party of choice. EVM’s (Electronic Voting Machines) changed that as well. Today, one can exercise the voting power with the click of a button. Earlier, the way for parties to reach the voters was through graffiti & posters, today, it’s about using various forms of media. And this year, with the radio & television, it was the social media that the political parties used.
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Around 41 million new voters were eligible since the last elections in 2004 & most spend more time on the internet than any other medium. A lot of blogs were newly created & the other existing bloggers started to converse about the political affairs of the country on the eve of elections. Blogging gives voice to people, who cannot be heard otherwise. And they were heard, albeit to some extent. L K Advani, the prime ministerial candidate of BJP, one of the two largest parties in India started his own blog. At least more than 10 candidates contesting the elections followed & started blogging actively after that. This gave people a chance to interact with leaders, express their views and actually be responded to. A few candidates got very active on twitter and regularly provided updates even on the day the results were being announced. Facebook pages, Orkut conversations, Photos at Flickr, Videos at Youtube, this year we saw it all. My company BlogAdda set up a dashboard on Indian Elections & even helped BJP organise a bloggers meet at their state headquarters in Mumbai. It was quite amazing that so many people used real time updates to express, converse & report about elections. For new voters, this helped them to take an informed decision.
One of the good things about social media is almost real-time two way conversations. With American elections taking the lead, political parties in India, the world’s largest democracy too tried this media and we can be sure that in the next assembly elections, this will be very very powerful. Kudos to the social media!
Gaurav Mishra at Global Voices lists election reactions and observations that Indian voters 
After practicing law for a number of years, Michael Jay Friedman returned to school and earned a doctorate in U.S. political and diplomatic history. 
Michelle Austein Brooks is a U.S. government and politics writer who has covered three national elections for America.gov. 
Peggy B. Hu defied Asian-American stereotypes in college by studying comparative literature and international relations rather than math and science. 
Stephen Kaufman is an experienced writer who has covered the White House and the State Department, and continues to report on international and democracy issues, including press freedom. 
Tanya Brothen is a blogging enthusiast who began writing for the web on a whim. Now it’s her job.