Reuters: Washington will become the first state in the US to allow its residents to register to vote through popular social media network Facebook.
The program will launch later this month, according to the secretary of state’s office.
“Online voter registration has existed in Washington since 2008, but the latest effort to increase voter participation is designed for users who already have a Facebook account.”
What an outstanding idea! It is easy to draw the contrast between this idea— which unmistakably makes the process of registering to vote insurmountably easier— to plans in southern states which aim to deny the right to vote to minority groups and the impecunious through voter I.D. laws.
We should move towards the former approach and make it as easy as possible for the greatest number of people to participate in the democratic process. In some European nations, your voter registration details are linked to your postal address, so re-registering at a new address is as simple as changing your address. Ideas like that open the process up— quite important in a nation like ours with compulsory voting.
