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By Michael Turk, 03/15/2007 - 12:14pm
Voters play a fairly significant role in elections. It seems like a relatively obvious point, but it seems to have been lost by all but one of the top tier Presidential candidates.
The goal of any campaign is to reach, identify, and mobilize voters. The common thread of all voters is they're registered (please hold your voter fraud comments).
I took a tour of BarackObama.com, HillaryClinton.com, JohnEdwards.com, JohnMcCain.com, MittRomney.com, and JoinRudy2008.com. Only one of the Presidential candidates has an option for visitors to register to vote.
This is troubling for a simple reason. We now have a single, national voter registration form that is accepted by all states. There had been a couple of holdouts, but even they have caved and now accept the form.
Only BarackObama.com provides a mechanism to get registered. Hillary has a link called "Help Grow Our Base", but it really should be titled "Help Grow MY Base" because it's not a voter registration tool for Democrats, but a recruitment tool for her supporters.
It would be very easy to provide a form for visitors to provide the data requested on the National Mail Voter Registration Form, and generate a pdf they could print and mail. What's more, the campaign could track those registrations and make sure they actually complete the process. They're on your website, obviously interested in you, and obviously interested in politics. Why wouldn't you take a simple step to help them participate, and help your campaign in the process.
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