Washington State To Allow Voter Registration Over Facebook

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Washington State To Allow Voter Registration Over Facebook

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @10:29PM from the now-your-cat-can-vote dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Associated Press reports that the state of Washington will soon have an application available on its Facebook page that will let residents register to vote. Washington and other states already allow online registration, but this is the first time it will be allowed over Facebook. The state's co-director of elections, Shane Hamlin, said, 'In this age of social media and more people going online for services, this is a natural way to introduce people to online registration and leverage the power of friends on Facebook to get more people registered.' Facebook won't have access to the State's database, and Hamlin says Facebook won't collect any of the personal information with which it interacts."

7 of 178 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Lovely by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 22:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

Nah, no chance for vote fraud there.
Why make voting easy? Why not make it hard? That makes sure only people who care enough to at least truly believe in who they're voting for, instead of making elections a shallow beauty contest.
1. Re:Lovely by Chrisq · 2012-07-17 22:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I think they only register on Facebook don't actually vote there, although with America and their evoting machines you never know. As for unnecessarily complicating the voting process to scare off undecided voters, that may not have the effect you are hoping for. You see, the more you know, the less you trust all the bullshit the parties are feeding to you, or that elections really have an effect on your life. The people who will go to an election no matter what are the radicals.
  It makes a difference from the "hanging chad", people saying "I didn't vote I just clicked "like" on a picture of a kitten and it registered as a vote for Mitt Romney"
2. Re:Lovely by jpate · 2012-07-17 23:02 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The people who will go to an election no matter what are the radicals.
  "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal" —Emma Goldman
3. Re:Lovely by quadrox · 2012-07-17 23:24 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  > tl;dr your a failure
  should read
  > tl;dr your'e a failure
  Sincerely,
  Hauptgrammatikfuhrer
What could possibly go wrong? by MachineShedFred · 2012-07-17 22:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

This seems like an incredibly bad idea, for several reasons:
1. People use bad passwords on Facebook
2. People get their Facebook accounts compromised all the time
3. Giving Facebook (the company) access to this kind of information scares the shit out of me.

--
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Bold Statement of the Month by JaredOfEuropa · 2012-07-17 23:09 · Score: 5, Insightful

Hamlin says Facebook won't collect any of the personal information with which it interacts
Riiiight

--
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Wilma!!!!!!! by setrops · 2012-07-17 23:19 · Score: 5, Funny

Facebook?
Really?
Are you fucking nuts?
I feel like watching a bad episode of the Flintstones where Fred gets one of his stupid ideas.