Text the Vote! Web 2.0 Comes to Election Politics
Date : 15 Aug 2008 Category : Technology
NewsFactor NetworkThe Web has certainly made it harder to roll out a surprise running mate. Four years ago, even as The New York Post reported incorrectly that Dick Gephardt would be John Kerry's 2004 vice presidential pick, a message-board commenter on an aviation Web site broke the news that Kerry had actually chosen John Edwards. (In a hangar, the commenter had spotted decals with Edwards' name being added to Kerry's campaign plane.)
But announcing Obama's running mate by text message has little to do with proclaiming the selection and everything to do with getting out the vote on Election Day in November. The move should add thousands -- and more likely tens or hundreds of thousands -- of cell phone numbers to what is already one of the most detailed political databases ever created.
A study conducted during the 2006 elections showed that text-message reminders helped increase turnout among new voters by four percentage points, at a cost of only $1.56 per vote -- much cheaper than the $20 or $30 per vote that the offline work of door-to-door canvassing or phone banking costs.
For Obama, who is building his campaign around bringing in new young voters and registering minority voters, there's no more effective outreach than a text message. Cell phones, which legally can't be called by pollsters and can't be reached by campaign "robo-calls," are the most intimate form of communication technology today. Young voters of every race are more likely to use their cell phones...