QOTD — Would You Register to Vote via Facebook?
In the next week or so, voters in the State of Washington will be able to register to vote via Facebook. How does it work?
He explained that Washington hopes to make it as easy as possible for voters to register. Between March 2010 and March 2011, 60 percent of Washington voters who registered online were 18-34 years old. Since 2008, more than 475,000 new registrations or updated information have been processed.
“Your information is coming to us from Facebook but you can do that without leaving Facebook,” he added.
“Your name and date of birth are pulled from Facebook profile, then it operates exactly as it does if you’re not in Facebook. Our state database checks to see if you’re already registered. If you are, it will take you to MyVote service, [where] you can update registration information. You also need a Washington state ID or driver’s license. We do another real-time check to match that this is a real person who is registering.”
And it saves the state money too!
But it *is* Facebook, notoriously cavalier about your data, your privacy and your experience with their software. So what do you think? A good idea or would you stay away?
First of all, no. Because I’m not on Facebook and I don’t want anything to do with Facebook. If Facebook was my only choice to register online, I’d mail it in instead.
I’d register online via a state-run, publicly accountable website, but not via Facebook or any private corporation.
WA already has a non-Facebook way to register online. It’s far better just to skip Facebook and go straight to the state-run voter registration page. The Facebook app is just an add-on that accesses the state web page and pre-populates your form from your Facebook profile data.
What Puck said.
No. And I also wouldn’t comment on a thread dealing with facebook voter registration.
Me, personally? No. Zuckerberg ain’t my friend. But it’s too little, too late. Facebook’s users are age bifurcated, now. They’re young and they’re old, but the 20 somethings are withdrawing.
I do very little via Facebook. I don’t quite trust them. But it seems that it wouldn’t take that much additional effort for a state to create their own standalone app to register voters — one that didn’t have any exposure to the usual bad information stewards.
Facebook? Hacked much? You betcha. Young people are heading for the exits. State websites are enough.
“Young people are heading for the exits [of facebook]. State websites are enough.”
The only time those words were ever uttered in the history of the internet. Puh-lease. Social networks are here to stay in some form or another, and until there’s someplace for the “20 somethings” who are “withdrawing” to go that isn’t Facebook, they’ll put up with privacy issues and user abuse because there is nothing better. Hell, they’ll protest the breaches of privacy THROUGH Facebook. Saying that facebook is, in so many words, a fad, is like saying that Google is a fad. Like alcohol is a fad. It’s impacted society too much to simply fade away.
Yahoo, Aol, Myspace, etc. were supposed to be THE future of social networking.
Facebook isn’t a glimpse into the future like those were supposedly, it’s the right now and the foreseeable, Sussex. It’s what young people do every hour of every day. Yahoo was never like that. Myspace and AOL were almost that.
Not sure about 20 somethings but teenagers (and I would guess a lot of 20 somethings) have already exited facebook. They use twitter, instagram, and path. I never heard of path until 5 minutes ago after I read this and asked my kid if he used facebook.
You know you’re gonna google Path now 🙂
High School teacher’s said they are all about Twitter and don’t mess with FB anymore. That said I just got on Twitter and I am not following it well.
At the time, AOL Yahoo and MySpace were the here and now.
We are moving on to other formats. QR codes, Twitter, etc.
I wrote about my daughter ditching Facebook over a year ago. Pencadermom has the list of what’s happening now! 🙂
QR codes are not social networks.
It’s a good rule of thumb: When adults stumble on to something cool, they ruin it and the kids leave.
Pandora, I just read your daughter ditching facebook post and the comments and I’m so glad I did because I got to read the funniest comment I’ve read so far on a blog.: “I’m shocked when someone gives me a work related email address and it is “@aol.com” It is like seeing a Woolly Mammoth.” Not sure if it was funny because I have been drinking wine for two hours or because I am still on aol (there is a reason, related to my business and too boring to tell) but to whoever wrote that comment, a year ago, thanks for the laugh tonight.
What’s wrong with good old email? People who think email is “too slow” probably bang on the microwave going “Dammit, why can’t this thing heat up my burrito any faster!”
I just learned a new acronym – tl:dr which means “Too long, didn’t read.” I think we may need to start putting Adderall in the water supply.