Twitter launches voter registration campaign #BeAVoter

Who said enlightened democracy was dying in the combative cesspool of social media?

Twitter has launched a voter registration campaign in partnership with TurboVote called #BeAVoter. 

Beginning Monday, Twitter will show users a prompt encouraging them to register to vote. The prompt will also include a tweet users can share to further encourage their followers to vote. 

TwitterGov, Twitter’s politics arm, is running the campaign. It will promote the hashtag in the run-up to the election as a “Top US Trend.” It will also provide “election reminders and an absentee ballot FAQ.”

TwitterGov released a host of new tools and requirements about political advertising in recent months. All political candidates are now labeled as such, and users will be able to see all ads a candidate is running on their page. Additionally, accounts that try to run issue or candidate ads have to certify that they are based in the US, and disclose who’s paying for the ad.

Those changes are part of Twitter’s efforts to root out foreign political influence on the platform, after the extent of Russia’s election interference came to light. 

This isn’t Twitter’s first voter registration campaign, though it is its most visible. For the 2016 presidential election, Twitter partnered with Rock the Vote, Google, and Pew’s Voting Information Project. Twitter users could DM Twitter’s @Gov account to get registration and voting information. That campaign came before the social media foreign interference shit hit the proverbial fan.

Now, with placement in people’s home feeds, this year’s registration effort is much more prominent and proactive. And using social media as a tool to empower democratic participation certainly manifests the best of what social media companies can do. 

Still, a clicktivist Twitter drive might be more commendable if Jack Dorsey and Twitter (and other social media companies) were willing to actually stand up to the political party that’s perpetrating voter suppression across the country, instead of bending over backwards to appease them. Or, ya know, if they would ban the Nazis already.