Facebook and Washington state join forces to register voters
Collaborating with Microsoft, Washington state and Facebook partner to create an app that lets the state's residents register to vote via the social network. — Follow @darakerr — Washington State Election's Facebook page.
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook is extending its 2012 election-related activity beyond the CNN partnership around an “I’m Voting” app into a transaction tied to a state election authority. Washington State and Microsoft give the effort an institutional and technical partner, turning Facebook from a venue for civic expression into a route for completing voter registration.
First-order effects
- Washington residents gain a Facebook-based path to submit voter-registration information, while Washington State adds a distribution channel for its registration process.
- Facebook and Microsoft become operating partners in a state election-service workflow rather than merely providing communications tools.
Second-order effects
- Other state election authorities gain a concrete model for reaching eligible residents through a large social platform, raising the value of platform integrations alongside official election websites.
- Facebook’s election partnerships become more dependent on public-sector trust and state-specific implementation, giving election officials greater influence over how the service is deployed.
Third-order effects
- If state-by-state integrations proliferate, voter-registration access may increasingly be shaped by partnerships between public agencies and dominant consumer platforms rather than by government sites alone.
- The arrangement points to a broader governance question: civic services delivered through private interfaces concentrate both access and responsibility in platform-state collaborations.
The trend: Consumer internet platforms are moving from election-related messaging toward direct integration with public civic-service workflows.