You found it!...
TxtVoter
You've arrived at TxtVoter, which was a campaign to register young voters for the 2006 election cycle - using a combination of SMS, snail mail, social networking, and an online voter registraiton tool. The TxtVoter program is no longer active. But a lot of people continue to ask about it, so we're keeping the site up.
If you're curious, this is how it worked:
- Using this site, you or your organization could sign up for a keyword on our shortcode (75444).
- You could then go out in the world and try to get your friends, collegues, and strangers to text your keyword to our shortcode.
- When they texted in, they would be engaged in our SMS-based voter registration process, which would result in sending them to a Web site to generate a PDF voter registraiton form, or would mail them a pre-filled out voter registration form (as per their stated preference)
- You, the registrar, could track your new voter all the way through the registraiton process - be it online or by snail mail. If they got stuck on one of the steps (such as mailing back the form to their state registrar), you would know about it and could give them a nudge.
- Using the site, you could see how you were doing compared with your friends. Top registrars were listed on your personalized home page - along with a bunch of other tools to help you become a more successful registrar - such as Poster and Flyer generators.
So, that's pretty much it. The SMS part didn't work so well until the last 2 weeks before the registration deadlines, when there was suddenly a flurry of activity. We've recently written some of this learning into a new book. Check it out!