I'm putting this out here in case anyone wants to earn a few extra bucks for whatever reason. If you have a few minutes between phone banking and canvassing, you can make a little money just by being aware and informed about the upcoming election. No, it isn't a scam and I'm not making any money by passing this along.
Amazon.com has a service that isn't well known and it's called Amazon Mechanical Turk (usually referred to as mTurk). It's a cloudsourcing site and while much of the work is of the sweatshop variety - lots of effort for little pay - there are a number of academic studies right now paying anywhere from fifty cents to six bucks to take an election survey. In the past couple of weeks I've taken a few dozen and made about $75 total with very little effort, which I've used for political donations. Most are in the 5 to 10 minute range, a few take 20 minutes or so, and some continue to survey you through election day for additional payment. Almost none require you to write anything, you simply click on radio buttons for party affiliation, etc. You can transfer your earnings to your checking account or cash them in for Amazon gift certificates. It's good if you need holiday money as well.
You can sign up here and no, I don't get a referral for this. mTurk has no referral program.
Once you sign up and get to the HIT page (the page that has various tasks) search 'election' or 'politics'. 'Survey' is also a good term. These studies come and go fast so check a few times a day. It generally takes about 2 days or less for the the payment to be approved and put into your mTurk account.
Most of the academic surveys will use a mechanism to make sure you're reading the questions and giving honest answers so be sure to read each question carefully. Stanford has had quite a few lately and I just finished a political survey from the University of Connecticut. Stick with the academic surveys as they tend to be quick and pay well. I wouldn't waste time taking any survey that pays less than 50 cents, but if you want to take a bunch of lower-paying political HITS that adds up as well.
I know some people here are having a difficult time making ends meet and perhaps a few extra bucks will come in handy so I wanted to do a quick diary on it.