This is how frazzled I am of late: in recounting recently completed projects we’ve launched at Behavior, I completely forgot to mention a project in which I invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears myself: Vote: The Machinery of Democracy is a new online companion to the recently opened physical exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Behring Center.

A quick overview: there’s a Flash version and an HTML version, and we’re equally proud of both. The site is divided into nine thematic parts which tell a roughly chronological history of the technology that has enabled Americans to vote through the past 225 years. There’s an interactive map, too, that will allow you to zoom in on your state and county to see what technology was used in the 2000 general elections. The map, and the zoom feature available for all of the artifacts, take advantage of the excellent Zoomify technology that’s become popular recently.

Being geeks for politics (among other things), we jumped at the chance to work on this exhibition, and we labored over the site for several months. Working with the content was a treat in itself, but at one point the curating staff was nice enough to give us a tour through the rich archives of political ephemera that they store at the National Museum of American History. You’ll find dozens of them in the exhibition, but that’s just a fraction of some of the amazing artifacts they’ve collected over the years.