The U.S. Presidential election is less then 30 days away and new technologies look poised to have a demonstrable impact on young voter registration and also how many citizens turn out to the polls.  

On-line voter registration is not a new phenomenon but appears for the first time to bring substantial new young voters to the electorate.  Rock the Vote, one of the leading sites targeting first time voters, has registered 2.3 million voters in the last 15 months, roughly twice as many as they registered in 2004. [1]  

Rock the Vote began in 1992 with public service announcements (PSA) aimed at raising awareness among young voters of the importance of voting initially registered 350,000 new voters.  This presidential election, in addition to producing their standard PSAs, they are also experimenting with social networking technologies and most importantly allowing users to register on-line.  Users complete a web-based form compliant with the National Voter Registration Application Form, download and print the completed form, and are given the appropriate address for their Secretary of State to submit their registration. Currently all states but North Dakota, New Hampshire, and Wyoming, accept the PDF signed form. [2]

Apart from the Web site, Rock the Vote has also partnered with Microsoft to allow the approximately 12 million users of Xbox Live to potentially register through their video gaming console.  As Heather Smith, Rock the Vote Director noted, “To realize our goal of registering 2 million young Americans by this fall, we need to go where young Americans are, and there's no doubt in our minds that many are on Xbox 360 and Xbox Live.”[3]

Social networking techniques are also being used to help drive voter registration.  Perhaps the largest of these is the Ultimate College Bowl (http://ultimatecollegebowl.com) which tracks how many voters are registering from America’s college campuses and provides a widget that can be embedded in web pages to help motivate classmates to help push their University registration numbers higher.  The University with the top number of new registered votes will be awarded a free concert while individual students who register the most students are eligible for scholarships and video games.[4]

Social sites are also offering users the options of sending text messages to their phones reminding them to vote.  Research conducted during the 2006 election shows the powerful impact of this reminder.  In 2006, 4000 mobile phone users were chosen at random from a new voter registration pool and sent voting reminders.  They were then asked to gauge the impact of that reminder.  The research reported that:
“• Across the board, text message reminders increased the likelihood of an individual voting by 4.2 percentage points.
• Of the different messages tested, a short, to-the-point reminder was most effective, with a boost of nearly 5 percentage points.
• In a follow up survey, 59% of recipients reported that the reminder was helpful, versus only 23% who found it bothersome.
• Hispanics had especially positive feelings about the reminders.
• At just $1.56 per additional vote generated, text messaging was extremely cost effective.”[5]

It seems likely that this is the first major Presidential election where the maturation of legal changes, spread of on-line technologies, and convergence of mobile devices (cell phones) may have their first major impact.  It will be important to analyze how these trends impact the participation of the young voter in the upcoming election.