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Try out CivicSpace if you want a simple install process. It's a Drupal distribution designed for the NGO/Activist world so it does a lot of handholding and is very automated. It's basically regular Drupal plus a custom set of modules and themes and the fancy installer. Here they explain the differences between CivicSpace and vanilla Drupal:

http://civicspacelabs.org/home/differences

One of the highlights for me was the talk by Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal, on Thursday.

Drupal is way ahead of Ruby on Rails in terms of flexibility, scalability and implementation, IMO. They work in different spaces (Ruby hosting is scarce, though there are a few) but the clean architecture and extensibility of Drupal while remaining fast and small is exciting.

The Drupal BOF was well-attended (they even had a full buffet!). Both http://www.bryght.com/ and http://civicspacelabs.org/home/ were represented.

SpreadFirefox uses a variant to Drupal, named CivicSpace. Does that make much difference with patching? Maybe only a few aspects are different. I installed it, I've only noticed just some minor changes, nothing too major really (of course, I spent only a few minutes with it), but personally I'd probably stick to Drupal. Larger community base.

Actually, spread firefox is using CivicSpace, which is based on what the Howard Dean campaign did with Drupal (DeanSpace) during the primary campaign last year.

Grab the zipcodes database from the CivicSpace Labs project and look up lat/lon against user-supplied zipcodes.

I worked with Dan early on in the design process for this project. At the time, I pushed Drupal (and CivicSpace -- since I work for them) for its modularity, ease of hacking, community-centered design and superior architecture (taxonomy, etc) and for the experience I had using it on Spread Firefox, but I can't take credit for "convincing him". In fact, I didn't realize that the project had moved forward so much until it came up on the Drupal-dev list. But now the site has launched and I've talked with Dan, it looks like I'll yet again have the chance to contribute to this project!

Funny how disinformation flows though...!

I worked with Dan early on in the design process for this project. At the time, I pushed Drupal (and CivicSpace -- since I work for them) for its modularity, ease of hacking, community-centered design and superior architecture (taxonomy, etc) and for the experience I had using it on Spread Firefox, but I can't take credit for "convincing him". In fact, I didn't realize that the project had moved forward so much until it came up on the Drupal-dev list. But now the site has launched and I've talked with Dan, it looks like I'll yet again have the chance to contribute to this project!

Funny how disinformation flows though...!

Well, this happened very early on when I was still actively working on the theme. I had Josh Jarmin step up and do a great job on the CSS but then I couldn't find anyone to work on the Drupal Image Gallery module.

I am working on rewriting the Spread Firefox theme for CivicSpace 0.8.1, so that will hopefully address some of the problems that folks have reported about the theme.

The Dean campaign ran on open source software. Looks like the project lives on under the name "CivicSpace."

http://www.civicspacelabs.org/

I second this. I'm not a big PHP fan, but the Drupal guys (and its cousin project CivicSpace) were very thoughtful in designing a complete drop-in but very extensible CMS framework. Plone with Archetypes is also a good choice, if you prefer Python (and who wouldn't?), and it tends to iron out a lot of the wrinkly parts of Zope that turn people away.

Time to mention CivicSpace Labs, a project started by Zach Rosen who had been with the Dean campaign (along with a few others who I don't know).

Quoting from the site:
"CivicSpace Labs is a funded continuation of the DeanSpace project. We are veterans of the Dean campaign web-effort and are now building the tool-set of our dreams. We are busily completing work on CivicSpace, a grassroots organizing platform that empowers collective action inside communities and cohesively connects remote groups of supporters."

This is not suprising given the fact that the site runs on CivicSpace.
This is the funded continuation of DeanSpace, the Drupal-based grassroots campaigning software created for and used in Howard Dean's campaign.

And it's all open-source too.

Also worth checking out is CivicSpace, the new incarnation of DeanSpace, currently being developed by Civic Space Labs. They recently released a free (speech and beer) zipcode database, and are building in tools mimicing the "get local" aspects of the Dean campaign along with some really cool GOTV stuff.

Everything is based on Drupal, and is very tech friendly....RSS feeds, iCal files for events, etc. It's syndication gone political and is damn impressive stuff.

I built a few sites during the Dean campaign using the first iteration of the tools, and have watched them progress from there. It's definitely worth checking them out if you're looking to build a camapaign site for a candidate or a movement.