Oct. 4, 2006 — A voter campaign aimed at people aged 18 to 29 is using text messaging to prompt Generation Y to register.
The TxtVoter project, led by the San Francisco-based non-profit Mobile Voter,
aims to register 55,000 young voters for the Nov. 7 general
election.
Not only could the campaign impact this year's voting outcome, it
could plant seeds of political action sooner rather than later among young Americans, project members believe.
"By 2015, generation Y will be a staggering 37 percent of the
electorate. That's bigger than the baby boomers and much more
diverse," said Grace Stanat, who along with Ben Rigby is co-executive
director of Mobile Voter, which focuses on using mobile technology
to engage youth in civic action.
Unfortunately, there has been a downward trend in youth voting for the
last 30 years, said Stanat.
"We know that politicians want to reach this age group. We also know
they don't know how. They don't know what messages to send or what
media to use," said Stanat.
Thanks to the cell phone, politicians may finally have an in.
It turns out that 80 percent of people aged 18 to 29 own cell phones, and
65 percent of 18 to 27-year-olds text message on a regular basis.
Stanat and Rigby decided to capitalize on that fact and enlist the
technology to encourage people to register.
They launched Mobile Voter in 2004 and received funding this year from
the Pew Charitable Trusts as part of Young Voter Strategies, a
nationwide non-partisan project to accumulate and provide data related
to youth voting trends.
With that funding, Mobile Voter began the TxtVoter campaign, which
makes it possible to register by sending a text message.
The interested person simply text messages the keyword "voter" to 75444.
The phone message is sent to a computer at Mobile Voter that is able
to receive and send messages like a phone, but can also store
information in a database.
The computer replies with a text message, asking the person for a name and address.
