Facebook Joins Election Fever

Facebook has innovatively joined up in the election fever that is slowly gathering pace in the UK. It seems that Facebook has joined up with the Electoral Commission to try and get people who are eligible to vote but are not registered to sign up to their local council's electoral registration office.

How will this innovation work?

Over the coming weekend users from the UK who visit Facebook will be prompted with a question whether they have registered to vote. If you click yes then you will be able to continue on your merry way to messaging friends and building your farm on Farmville, however if you click “no” then Facebook will send you to an Electoral Commission page where you can enter details for voting registration.

Once you have filled the details you need to print and post the form to your local council authority. The web page will automatically give you this address once you have filled in your address details.

With an estimated 3.5 million people eligible to vote who are not registered, and the main bulk of this number being in the 18 to 24 year bracket it seems that the Electoral Commission is really using the power of Facebook to gets those who are not registered to vote.

Facebook Director of policy, Richard Allan said of the move: "One of the strengths we have is to try and capture that group, particularly the 18-24 year-old voters, who have often not turned out to vote, and use the fact that many of the things on Facebook are familiar to them to get them engaged."