Registering Kids to Vote by Cell Phone

Mobile Voter, in partnership with Music for America, has won a grant to register thousands of young voters at hundreds of concerts across the U.S. this summer. At these concerts, performers will tell their audiences that they can register to vote by text message. The software will enable them to request forms on the spot, by supplying their postal address.

The have announced the winners of the first-ever national competition to support innovative nonpartisan strategies to register young voters ages 18 to 29. In 2006, Young Voter Strategies, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, will work with 13 groups nationwide to register 350,000 young voters.

Each project will focus on registering a subset of young voters, including young African Americans, community college students, Latinos, Evangelical youth, high school seniors, four-year college students, tech-savvy mobile phone users, young single women and more. Groups will use innovative internet, email, and mobile phone strategies, streamlined peer-to-peer tactics, presentations by high school teachers and college professors, and creative outreach by celebrities and musicians at concerts.

Competition winners will each target different groups of young adults using strategic and innovative tactics:

Mobile Voter and Music for America will register 18 to 29 year olds nationwide using creative text-messaging and Internet technology in conjunction with concerts and celebrity outreach.

For more information about Young Voter Strategies and for the full press release, visit: https://youngvoterstrategies.electionmall.name/e-contentstrategy/news.asp