Myspace/Facebook and local elections...

One of the major problems facing the future of the United States is the lack of political participation by young voters. Voter turnout between the ages of 18 and 25 have declined sharply since the 1970’s which has motivated intellectuals and political leaders to strive to find an effective way to motivate young adults to vote. Many thought that with the advent of the Internet, the explosion of information available would motivate an increase in voter turnout among the entire population, not to mention the Internet-savvy youth.
After the success of Howard Dean’s internet fundraising scheme, attention to the power of the internet as a means for political participation was once again spent. As such I found it particularly advantageous to consider the potential for gaining support amongst my peers when I decided to run for a position as a member in the local school board.
I realized that the popularity of social networking sites amongst my fellow schoolmates and friends could possibly be a tool for gaining support for my campaign. Thus, I began researching the impact of the Internet, mainly social networking sites including Myspace and Facebook, on voter turnout from the 18-25 year old age group.
Today Myspace has over 87 million members, and continues to increase at 270,000 new signups each day. Despite recent controversies regarding pedophiles and other sexual predators, Myspace continues to grow, even internationally. There is no better way to find individuals and contact them with political informational material. Facebook, like Myspace, is a social networking tool that was initially specifically geared toward students and business people with registered email addresses in their respective networks. Since it’s advent in 2004, Facebook has gained over 12 million registered users. Since Facebook required a valid school or work email address, it was the perfect tool for finding educated people and funneling information. Furthermore, since positive correlations between educational level and voter participation have been found, it seems that Facebook would be a very useful tool in targeting an educated populace geared toward political activism. The combined popularity of Myspace and Facebook may be a worthy target for political activism, since the combination of the two totals nearly 100 million people. If a fraction of this large group of people were successfully targeted, it could mean enough to decide a local election.
I knew that if I could combine this new Internet strategy with the more traditional styles of campaigning, I would be able to build a base of support large enough to out seat my opponent. Thus I formed support groups on both Myspace and Facebook and managed to have 436 members by Election Day. In my opinion, this support was instrumental in increasing the voter turnout from 7,548 votes in 2000 to 8,467 in 2006 (smartvoter.org), which is an increase in almost 11 percent (or 919 votes).
After the election, the group members were surveyed and as a result we now know that 68% the members were first time voters; and 64% stated that they would have not voted if it wasn’t because of the personal connection they felt towards the campaign as a result of being members of my group. Looking back at the Election, I now can show the importance of the internet and social networking sites in helping shape the future of local elections.