The State of Washington says that early next week it will become the first state in the nation to offer voter registration via Facebook.
In 2008, the Pacific Northwest state became just the second in the union to offer online registration. This week, a new Facebook app created by Microsoft (a Washington company, naturally) will provide a new interface to let voters access the MyVote system.
Today, Washington and 12 other states, including Utah, California, counties in Nevada, Connecticut, Indiana, and others offer online voter registration.
"Facebook has millions of users, and a lot of users in Washington state—half of all Facebook members log on every day," said Shane Hamlin, the state’s co-director of elections, in a phone call with Ars on Tuesday afternoon.
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."
Hamlin added that not only is online registration more efficient for voters, but it’s cheaper, too.
"It saves the county $0.50 to $2 per registration and saves the state $0.25 per registration, as of 2009," he noted. "If this works as we expect, Facebook and Microsoft will be more than happy to work with any other state that has online registration."
UPDATE: Shane Hamlin e-mailed Ars on Tuesday evening to say: "I recall saying that the soonest the app will be available is next week, but that it could be released later."
Source: http://arstechnica.com
