Mobile phones have enormous potential in electoral, voter registration, and election monitoring campaigns.

With close to 2.5 billion phones in circulation around the world, in many countries mobile phones are the easiest and least expensive way to communicate and are far more pervasive than the Internet.

Internationally mobile phones have been used for systematic election monitoring in Macedonia and Kenya, among women voters in Saudi Arabia, and in a number of popular uprisings in the Ukraine and South Korea. In the 2004 U.S. election, almost 10,000 people started their voter registration process through a mobile campaign. This year the U.S. based group Mobile Voter aims to register 55,000 young people to vote via their cell phones.

While the use of mobile phones in elections and voter registration campaigns is still in an experimental stage, a lot has been learned about the characteristics of successful campaigns. In this guide we will share these findings with you, along with case studies, and other information organizations can use to run their own mobile campaigns.

Download the guide (PDF).

Look for other guides in the Mobile Active Strategy Guide series that will focus on issue advocacy, fundraising, humanitarian and disaster relief, and mobile organizing.

If you know of a mobile electoral or voter registration campaign not mentioned in this guide, or if you would like to provide more information on a case studies, please comment below or contact us. 

This guide was written by Michael Stein, a writer and Internet strategist, and edited by Katrin Verclas, the executive director of NTEN.

Download the guide (PDF).

Read the press release.

Contact us. 

MobileActive is a project of Green Media Toolshed.  The MobileActive Strategy Guides were produced with the support of the Surdna Foundation, and in collaboreation with NTEN: Your Nonprofit Technology Community.