Is anyone in the Kerry, Dem, or local campaigns doing any Get Out the Vote via SMS paging? A lot of people have SMS-enabled phones and most of the younger folks don't even have landlines, so this would be a good way to reach them on election day.
There have been embryonic efforts like MobileVoter out there, but they seem to be stalled in very early stages. There's a John Kerry Wireless Community channel on UPOC but I can't tell if it even works. There's no mention of wireless or SMS on the Kerry web site (and yes, I do know Dean was doing some of this, but it sort of fizzled out).
A quick n' dirty technical solution (database, web-page, SMS broadcaster) could be whipped up in a short period of time by a few technically savvy people -- with a little funding from the party or the Kerry campaign. The idea would be to have people give their email address and/or phone number or to send a text message to well-known phone number to automatically get signed up. A week before election-day, they would get a short message reminding them that the election is coming up. One day before, another one so they can think about making time for it. And a couple of messages on election day (say, one in the morning, and one in mid-afternoon for people coming off work). If you want to get fancy about it, you can ask for their home address and send them the address of their nearest polling location and personalized reminders on local races and candidates.
I imagine the transmission and marketing costs would have to be borne by the party, a 527, or individual campaigns, but it would be a heck of a lot cheaper than direct mailers or TV ad buys -- and potentially reach a lot more people.
If you think this is a worthwhile idea, pass the word along so it can reach he right people to get it going. I'm willing to do some leg and tech work and on finding out what's needed to get this up and running. Drop me a note at fubar AT needlenose.com or post your thoughts here. If somebody's already doing this and I've missed it, then GREAT! Please post a link to it.
Let's get going. Time's a running out.