Politics Meets Mobile Technology
When Elizabeth Edwards called in and confronted polarizing conservative pundit Ann Coulter on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, the exchange dominated TV news broadcasts and quickly circulated on the Internet. For John Edwards's supporters signed up to receive text messages to their cellular phones from his campaign, there was even personalized service. By replying to a text message sent from the campaign with the word "call," they would then receive a phone call from Edwards that played an automated audio clip of the spat.
John Edwards has been the first to start using mobile technology to move his message to the masses, something that many experts have predicted would be the next big thing in politics after Internet technology became widely used. Three other Democratic candidates—Sen. Barack Obama, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and Sen. Hillary Clinton—are also jumping on board, with possibly more to follow. Justin Oberman, a new media consultant and a contributor to TechPresident.com, said that what these four candidates are doing, which mostly consists of sending out periodic text messages to supporters who sign up for a service, is just a start. "I think that they are pushing the envelope, but they are not pushing the envelope far enough," Oberman said.
In June, the Obama campaign introduced an initiative that would allow cellphone users to pose the campaign questions using text messages. To subscribe to get updates from the campaign, users could text message "GO" to the number 62262, which conveniently spells out the candidate's last name. They could then ask Obama anything. During this year's YearlyKos convention, the campaign also encouraged people to text OBAMA for information about Chicago, the senator's hometown.
Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki explained that a combination of staff and volunteers reply to the text messages. While interest in the service is growing, Psaki wouldn't give details on how many people have taken advantage of it. "It was another way to reach out to voters, potential supporters, keep them updated with the campaign and also encourage them to play an active role in the campaign," she said.
Psaki also said that the cellphone numbers collected are not being used for fundraising. Fundraising involving cellphones is complicated. Oberman explained that when dollars are exchanged over a text messaging service, wireless companies traditionally get a cut of the proceeds. The companies make no distinction between a political campaign soliciting donations and a company selling ringtones. In addition, it is illegal for telemarketers to call cellphones.
The Edwards campaign got around these hurdles by initiating a program that used both texting and calling before the end of the second fundraising quarter. The campaign set up two phone banks and then text messaged supporters asking them to reply with the word "call" if they wanted to hear a message from the candidate. If the phone owner agreed, the campaign then called and delivered a recording from Edwards with the option to donate at the end. The fundraisers were successful, as hundreds of people donated thousands of dollars.
The other two candidates using mobile technology, Clinton and Kucinich, have done less than Edwards and Obama, though Kucinich has encouraged supporters—in a popular YouTube video—to text "PEACE" to subscribe to his text messaging service. The Republican candidates haven't dabbled in cellphone technology yet; Democrats have generally been quicker to jump on technological innovations. However, that doesn't mean the GOP won't soon be involved. Tech-savvy conservative bloggers, who have already used their influence to persuade skeptical Republican presidential candidates to attend a CNN/YouTube debate in November, are also encouraging them to use mobile technology in new and innovative ways.
Patrick Ruffini, a Republican online strategist, wrote on his blog about how text messaging could have effectively been used at last weekend's Republican straw poll in Ames, Iowa. He said candidates could have told supporters to text message them and then reward those supporters with something if they stopped by the candidate's tent. All supporters would have had to do would be to show campaign workers their cellphones. Ruffini also said that using mobile technology is often better for local or statewide organizing—rather than just doling out national news about the campaign.
"It's something that people should take a look at," Ruffini told U.S. News. "It's not something that is a panacea by any means, but if you can apply it to the right situation—like the Ames straw poll, like the caucuses—you can make a real difference with it."
The technology has its limitations, and sometimes using other media is more practical. Ben Rigby led an innovative, yet not so successful, text messaging campaign to register voters in 2006. Rigby's organization Mobile Voter attempted to create a text messaging service that would allow eligible citizens to text in their voter information and then the organization would partially fill out a registration and send it back to the user via snail mail for the person to complete. Mobile Voter would remind the person to finish the registration and also to vote. Rigby said it was a lot easier to just set up a website and register voters from there, since the information needed to register is more complex than text messaging can easily handle.
Rigby said mobile technology is often most useful when organizing at a local level. The Edwards campaign is beginning to do this, by sending off text messages exclusively to people living in an area where Edwards is scheduled to appear or messaging people based on issues they say are important.
This is the kind of messaging that Oberman also advocates, as this is the best way to mobilize supporters quickly, since the messages go directly to a personal device. "The mobile phone, when it comes to politics, is not a persuasion tool, it is a mobilizer of the already persuaded," he said.