I posted a diary yesterday to promote an excellent GOTV organizing tool just rolled out by Organizing For America, a tool for using Facebook to inspire friends to vote. It allows the user to invite friends to commit to vote in the election and say why they are doing so.
I joined The Commit to Vote Challenge last night and it is already working. It is already having a positive effect. I've already heard from two friends whom I haven't actually seen in many years and both are positively committed to vote. I await responses from many others.
The tool is easy and fun to use. When you click the tool, you will be offered the chance to link to your Facebook account. It will then offer you a list of your friends. It offers three choices for each friend: 1) Just send the packaged link; 2) Add a personal message; 3) Skip. I have a modest 26 Facebook friends.
I probably should have hit skip more often, but I only excluded foreign citizens and minors. I sent personal messages to about a third or half of my Facebook friends and had a ball writing them. I wrote to older, younger and self identified liberal, conservative and all other kinds of voters from many walks of life. I sent the link even to my fundamentalist Christian sister-in-law in rural Oklahoma. I inspired, (they would say lectured) my children and their friends. I betcha I got at least one person who wasn't going to vote to decide to make the effort.
Here is an example that I directed to my younger daughter who is a college junior in the state of Washington:
Have you voted? I hope so. Whether or not you have, please commit to vote and use the gadget to get your uncommitted friends to do the same. It is worth the time and trouble just to do your part to keep Dino Rossi out of the U. S. Senate. I know you have objections to Patty Murray and I respect that. But whatever her faults, reelecting her could not possibly match the disaster that would ensue from the incorrigibly unscrupulous, dishonest, shill for the worst international corporatist plutocrats, Dino Rossi. You know what the right thing to do is: Vote.
I similarly tailored my message to various others to whom I personally spoke using the tool. This thing is cool and I don't see how a commenting, dairy writing Kossack could possibly resist another chance like this to shoot their mouths off. I certainly couldn't.
Everybody likes talking to their friends so who wouldn't like using the GOTV tool at The Commit to Vote Challenge. Go there. Use it. Have fun. Do good. GOTV.