Social Media First: Washington State will Use Facebook to Register Voters
By David Tobia
July 20, 2012
July 20, 2012
- After introducing online registration in 2008, Washington State continues its progressive tactics to spur voting by introducing Facebook voter registration.
- Prospective voters will access the Secretary of State’s Facebook page and then authorize an app (developed by Microsoft) to access their name and birth date. People will finish the process by manually entering driver license or state ID numbers.
- “When the app launches early next week, Washington will become the first state to offer voting registration through Facebook,” reports The Verge.
- “In this age of social media and more people going online for services, this is a natural way to introduce people to online registration and leverage the power of friends on Facebook to get more people registered,” explains Shane Hamlin, Washington State co-director of elections.
- Hamlin stressed that Facebook gains access to no data, and that all the user information goes only to Washington State.
- “You are giving your information to us, not Facebook,” he says. “Your name and date of birth are pulled from Facebook profile, then it operates exactly as it does if you’re not in Facebook. Our state database checks to see if you’re already registered. If you are, it will take you to MyVote service, [where] you can update registration information.”
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