The first ever drive for voter registration drive nationwide has been embarked upon by Facebook in a bid to encourage citizens of U.S. to go out en masse and vote on Election Day come November. To make this easy, the social network company added a feature that will remind users to go out, register and also come out on voting day. Users that are based in the U.S, are 18 years and above and eligible to vote will get notifications of “Register Now” located above the News Feed from September 23.
According to the company, the reminder will go on for the next 4 days. Facebook had in the past carried out a test on its ability to drive people to register for voting during the primaries in California, and this time around intends to take it all the way up to national.
Government outreach director, Facebook, Katie Harbath, said the company thought it has an obligation to remind people of the upcoming election and be moved to register so as to be able to vote on the Election Day.
The social network company has secretly in the past 8 years nudged eligible people to vote, but this time around, it is now open and has led to close to 1.5 million persons partaking in the whole process involved in the election.
The company therefore is notifying people who are 18 years and above to in the next coming days to expect to see such reminder appearing close to the News Feed. Clicking on the ‘Register Now’ will enable people that are yet to register and are citizens to be directed to the election portal of the government to place do their registration.
Once the person gets to the government website for voting, the person will be taken through on how to register so as to be able to vote in November. Such persons that have used the means to register will have the option to share it as a status within their circle. The company is quite optimistic that the initiative will help to get more people involved in the electoral process by registering first, and then getting ready for voting in November.
The interactions that will be communal in nature offered by the social networks will help in persuading more people to register for voting.
The social network giant is not the only platform urging people to partake in the electoral process. Snapchat alongside ‘Democracy Works’ TurboVote which is a NGO has also started the campaign on its app.
With their own feature, the user will be able to tell if they are qualified to vote using their Snapchat app. For that of YouTube, theirs is #voteIRL, and targeted at younger demographic as well as provide a short clip of simple it is to register so as to be eligible to vote in November.
