sms in elections

Founded in 2004, Mobile Voter is a non-profit non-partisan organization (501c.3) seeking to facilitate the process of civic participation via web and mobile technologies. Over the past two years, Mobile Voter has conducted innovative youth-focused voter registration campaigns making extensive use of text messaging (also known as "SMS") as a facilitating technology.

References / Past Projects

In 2006, Mobile Voter's, TXTVOTER '06 campaign registered tens of thousands of young voters across the country. The multi-pronged campaign leveraged the ubiquity of text messaging, a unique peer-to-peer registration model, and the organizational might of existing grassroots organizations. Over 200 groups worked with Mobile Voter to register and mobilize their constituencies. TXTVOTER '06 was funded by grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts (coordinated by Young Voter Strategies) and the MacArthur Foundation.

In 2007, Mobile Voter is working on a book with Rock the Vote entitled "Mobilizing Generation2.0: Using Web2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Engage, and Activate Youth." It will be published by Wiley Press in 2008.

With support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the George Washington Graduate School of Political Management, Young Voter Strategies, and the MacArthur Foundation, Mobile Voter's TXTVOTER '06 campaign sought to register 55,000 young voters in advance of the 2006 election.

The multi-pronged campaign leveraged the ubiquity of mobile phones, a unique peer-to-peer registration model, and the power of existing grassroots organizations. We worked with over 200 groups to register and mobilize their constituencies. We also partnered with Working Assets to implement an online voter registration tool called GoVote.org.

At final tally, over 70,000 people used our voter registration tools and services. We estimate that 47,600 of these people will end up on the voter rolls (historically, for various reasons, 32% of people who use web-based voter registration tools do not complete the process). Our results show that our web-based voter registration tools were more effective than our text-based tools in reaching and registering voters.