There's a lot to learn...
About
The TxtVoter campaign helps people register to vote by using their cell phones. It is brought to you by Mobile Voter, a non-profit, non-partisan organization (501c3). The project is part of a nationwide non-partisan project coordinated by Young Voter Strategies, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Did you know...
80% of Americans own a cell phone
63%+ send text messages regularly
TxtVoter makes it possible to register without a computer or printer. All you need is a cell phone.
How Does It Work?
There are three ways that help to get you registered.
1. Txt registration.
Anybody can text the keyword "voter" to 75444 from their cell phone. Maybe they saw a billboard, heard a radio ad, or just spoke with a friend. From this point, we collect their relevant info via a short text-message conversation and then mail them a completed registration form. All they have to do is sign it, date it, and mail it. Easy as pie. And you don't even need a computer, so anybody with a cell phone can do it.
2. Txt Message Campaigns.
This is kinda' like the first way, except that we let people run their own campaigns. The coolest this is that *anybody* can do it (a band, a sorority, joe blow, whoever). They just sign up for their own keyword and then get their friends/peeps/audience/grandmother to text that keyword to our number: 75444. From there, it works just like above, with the added whizbang feature of allowing each campaign organization to view the progress of their registrants online.
3. Online registration.
This has been done before, but we want to register as many people as we can, so we're doing it again. People can fill out a registration form right on our site, print it out, and mail it. We'll be launching this capability very soon (less than a week).
Follow Up
Not only do we get the registration forms out, but we also follow up. If somebody started the process via their cell phone, then after we mail them a completed form, we'll actually know when they put it in the mail (we use a nifty thing from the United States Postal Service called Planet Coding to figure this out). So if somebody's lagging on sending in their form, we'll send 'em a friendly reminder. And further, we'll send 'em another reminder text message on election day which also will include their polling place. No excuses. Please visit the Mobile Voter site to find out more about youth registration, trends, and the latest in mobile tech.
If you want to see what some other people think, check out the Press section.
