Today wasn’t so incredibly different from any other day: I woke up, I ate breakfast, I checked my RSS feeds, I logged into Facebook, Facebook told me I should vote, Facebook told me some of my friends had already voted, and Facebook told me that over 2.2 million other Facebook users voted. Okay, so today is election day — Facebook is making that fact well known — but could Facebook be one of the most powerful motivators to get out and vote? Maybe!
At the time of this writing, 2,202,404 people have already told Facebook that they have gone out and voted, and we can’t help but wonder how many of those 2.2 million wouldn’t have gone out and voted otherwise. Facebook is, after all, one of the most used websites by just about everyone.
Not only does Facebook encourage its users to vote (note: similar messages will appear for other countries that are holding elections), it also links to a Facebook page with an embedded Google Maps application to allow users to easily search for a local polling station. That’s nifty.
Needless to say, it is interesting. Sadly, we can’t quantifiably state whether or not Facebook will have a dramatic affect on voter turnout (we would like to think it would); however, it is nice to see that Facebook is being proactive and rewarding users with a badge who do vote.
Maybe we will one day be able to cast our votes for elected officials directly within Facebook. How cool (or crazy, or scary) would that be?
