“Sure, we can get people organized on the Internet, but how do we get them to vote?”
That must have been the question that political pros asked themselves in the years since the notorious implosion of Howard Dean’s Internet-driven bid for the presidential nomination in 2004. On September 25, Facebook gave them one good answer by debuting Register Now! -- an official voter registration application.
The app, powered by Credo Mobile, allows users to register to vote within Facebook. Users can also encourage friends to register via Facebook’s viral invitation channel. On the morning the application launched, Facebook registered more than 2,500 new voters and continued registering thousands of voters per hour in the days following, according to the blog Inside Facebook.
With millions of younger, Facebook-connected voters poised to make a dramatic impact on the 2008 election, the increasing integration of social computing technology with the nuts-and-bolts mechanisms of democracy is promising to revolutionize the political landscape.
This is a tremendously high-stakes game for the political parties. Over half of the so-called "Millennial Generation" (more than 80 million Americans born between 1981 and 2000) is now voting age, and the way they tilt will influence the partisan composition of the American electorate for decades.
According to Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics (2008), “The candidate who combines the newest in online campaign technology with a message that attracts Millennial voters will not only win the technology arms race, but also the presidency of the United States -- and partisan dominance in the civic era that is just around the corner.”
Politicians are paying close attention. Darcy Burner, a former software developer with a deep appreciation for the power of Internet technology, is running for Congress in Washington’s 8th district, in a rematch against incumbent Dave Reichert. Burner is a familiar name to the “NetRoots” community of online political activists, and she has successfully raised well over a million dollars online for her campaign -- at one point, tops in the country among Congressional candidates. She sees big potential in the Facebook announcement.
"I believe strongly in the importance of an active and engaged citizenry,” says Burner. “I’m excited by innovations that increase voter participation, particularly among younger voters. Young people have a huge stake in this election, and social networks like Facebook are an important way to bring the political process to them in ways that are relevant to their lives and experiences.”
Like many forward-looking political professionals of both parties, Burner and her team are eager to see the Internet bridge the last mile between capacity building and actual participation.
Internet writer Clay Shirky’s unsentimental judgment of Dean’s failed presidential bid is that he demonstrated the social organizing potential of Web 2.0 (in that case, Meetup.com), but not the political potential. At the end of the day, all the money and enthusiasm in the world means little if supporters don’t turn up and actually vote.
The importance of the Facebook online registration initiative obviously isn’t its technical dimension, which is fairly trivial. Rather, it’s the convergence of two very powerful forces: increased desire for political participation among the Millennial Generation, and the dominant consumer-facing social networking channel.
It’s also a harbinger of things to come. Today: Facebook-based voter registration. Tomorrow: secure and trustworthy online democracy via social channels?
— Rob Salkowitz is a writer and consultant specializing in the social implications of new technology. He is the author of Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap and co-author of Listening to the Future (both from John Wiley & Sons).
The relevance of Facebook, social networking, and web 2.0 tools in politics has come up a lot on this site in the last few months, with good reason because of the overall rabid interest in the election.
I have, on my rapidly growing to-do list, the transfer of an application we have done locally that I would like to see go nationwide, and I thought Facebook might be a good place. I did all the preliminary work to get it in motion, so I certainly agree with you that Facebook is a good method of reaching young voters, but it's kind of busy in the election world right now so I think it will stay on the "to do" list for a while.
In our community, we created a reverse polling place look-up feature (ours is at www.jocopolo.com) and we've made it available wirelessly through a shortcode. I don't think I'll get to it before the election for Facebook, but I can tell you that out of about 40,000 new registrations we have worked this year, none have come through the Facebook application you mention. (We've gone from about 320,000 to 360,000 registered voters in 2008 in Johnson County, Kan.). So, despite my own intuitive belief that Facebook is an effective method to reach voters and the anecdotal evidence you have, I'm not that sure that we will see any results.
I'm also interested in your statement that studies have show that partisan affiliations formed in youth tend to be durable over the voter's lifetime. I haven't seen those studies. I'm not doubting they exist--I would just like to read them.
Part of this, I think, is that the youth vote, the under 30 vote, the Facebook vote, the Gen Y vote, or any other way it is characterized is so broad, it's difficult to come up with actionable items, either in non-partisan get out the vote efforts or specific candidate initiatives.
I think the 18-20-year-old is much different than the 20-22 voter and the 22-25 voter. The 18 year-old is excited to vote, the 21 year-old may plan to vote but likely is at college and very well could be registered at home (finding out too late and thus having his or her vote not count at college) and the 22-25-year-old begins that youth drift from voting. Persons tend to become involved in voting again when they have a family.
The Facebook impact is one which I hope is broken down, state-by-state, county-by-county after the 2008 election. There is a new book coming out that I've ordered, but won't arrive until late November--The Myth of Digital Democracy by Matthew Hindman. I'm not even sure Facebook itself will be relevant in 2012, but hopefully some post-mortem studies will better determine if the medium is a relevant method to reach voters by then.
Excellent post ... as you say, the next few weeks will tell a lot of the story. I've been involved in a lot of social network activism this summer (for example as part of the One Million Strong for Barack group on Facebook and the Get FISA RIght my.barackaobama.com group that got a lot of attention in July), and the conditions are certainy right for major involvement by younger voters -- who continue to be marginalized in most online environments. Over the next few weeks, "election protection" and voter suppression are likely to be galvanizing topics, and these unifying causes where everybody has a stake are the ones most likely to get people to take action.
Well, we'll see in a couple of weeks. If the participation rates and the partisan split among the under-28 cohort resemble those forecast by Winograd & Hais (and reflected in the polls), the impact will be fairly obvious. Moreover, studies have shown that partisan affiliations formed in youth tend to be durable over the voter's lifetime. Considering the sheer number of potential first-time voters in this election, the effect could possibly be as dramatic as in 1932 and 1980. Each of those elections could fairly be described as "revolutionary" ("realigning" is the poli-sci technical term), in that they redrew the political map for decades. Whether people actually show up and vote - that's the big question! I've had that conversation with political consultants and campaigns, and you are not the only one to be skeptical.
Facebook is only playing at the margins this time around, but they're doing something fundamentally important by lowering barriers to formal participation. As Shirky says, when the costs of participation drop to near zero, that's when the big changes start to happen.
I still think this is all a bit idealistic. Re: "With millions of younger, Facebook-connected voters poised to make a dramatic impact on the 2008 election, the increasing integration of social computing technology with the nuts-and-bolts mechanisms of democracy is promising to revolutionize the political landscape."
"Promising to revolutionize" seems a bit far-fetched. "Might have something of an impact on," I think, is more accurate.
Nevertheless, the register to vote app is a very good idea. But it also reminds me of the Facebook Causes app which many people add to their profile without taking any further action.
The next step for Facebook users is, of course, actually going out and voting. What happens on Election Day will be a better determination of whether the Facebook voters are as serious about the actual election as they are about poking fun at candidates via microblogs.
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