Mobile Voter Launches Free Text-Messaging Service To Register Young Voters
Mobile Voter, a non- profit, nonpartisan organization specializing in mobile technology for civic participation, offers TxtVoter, a free, publicly available text-messaging service that enables non-profit groups and political campaigns of all types to register young voters. A number of organizations, including Voto Latino and Working Assets, are signed up to use TxtVoter.
“TxtVoter puts democracy at the fingertips of young voters,” said Grace Stanat, co-executive director of Mobile Voter. “Mobility, affinity and immediacy are a way of life for this age group. By reflecting this lifestyle, TxtVoter aims to sustain the 2004 increase in young voters and get even more to turn out in 2006.” In 2004, turnout among 18 to 29 year old voters jumped 9 percentage points over 2000 levels, an increase of 4.3 million voters.
“As a mobile telephone company that helped register over one million voters in 2004, we’re thrilled to feature TxtVoter in our voter registration campaign for 2006,” said Becky Bond, creative producer at Working Assets. “By offering a service that taps into young people’s communications culture, we’ll be able to reach more young voters than ever before and get them engaged in our democracy.”
With TxtVoter, participating organizations register voters by asking them to send a text-message from their cell phone to a specific phone number – similar to the method used to vote on American Idol. Callers key in their name and address in response to automated prompts. The system mails the user a registration form, including clearly worded, state-specific instructions.