
Show HN: Get Your Friends To Vote On Election Day - gailees
http://pleasevotetoday.com/
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mtgx
What is the message they are getting though? Is it a message that asks them to
go vote, or one that says to go vote for Obama?

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gailees
"Please Vote Today!"

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gailees
We just want to get young people out to vote; we think this may be one of the
most effective measures at this point.

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therobot24
by sending spam to your friends?

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duiker101
So, you want me to give you their phone number without their consent?
uhm...no.

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gailees
You can text them yourself; can you not?

All the app does is send the numbers through a twilio script on election day
that will shoot them a message: "Please Vote Today!"

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amitvaria
True - but you have to understand the distrust people have with supplying a
website with information like other people's phone numbers. What happens to
the numbers after Tuesday? Will the data be used for anything else? Will the
message include any additional advertising?

I'm sure you're doing this with the best of intentions, and commend you for
that. But you have to understand that healthy skepticism on the internet is
necessary to protect yourself.

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flexxaeon
Exactly. There's almost no information. Skeptics (like myself) will want to
know who is behind this app, why they're doing it, or something. About Us?
Terms & Conditions? Privacy Policy?

As someone mentioned above, the fact that it's got am "obama favicon", yet
makes no other reference to obama anywhere is also sketchy. Being neutral
about the importance of voting is a little more trustworthy.

Resolve all those things, and I'm _still_ not to keen on giving out my
friends' phone numbers for fear I'm adding them to a spam list.

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samarudge
We launched a similar sort of thing yesterday, taking advantage of our
community we're sending people free stickers if they take a picture of
themselves at a polling place or with their ballot papers.
<http://dft.ba/vote>

This idea seems pretty cool, could you not just add an entry to peoples
calendars (Might reduce the number of people you could influence to just
smartphone users, but I would imagine most people would have smartphones.
Guessing it's using Twilio?

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gailees
Yup. Twilio. We think texting is by far the most powerful way to actually get
people out to vote.

I worked a lot at the beginning of the semester on getting my friends
registered to vote; now, I really just want to see them get out there and
actually vote :)

love your site, BTW!

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chaselee
All Obama needs to do is read this on how to win an election, and he should be
okay...<http://mises.org/daily/5036>

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gailees
Interesting read; not sure how much it'd help the POTUS...

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chaselee
It wouldn't =D

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rjvir
Why is this specific to Obama - I'm pretty sure they are having the same
problem across the board.

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gailees
A majority of the young vote tends to lean towards Obama; this app mainly
targets people who frequently use text messaging for communication aka young
people.

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cabogdan
Pretty simple idea, simplicity sells.

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chriwend
Better than robo-calls.

