Political Campaigns Still Fine Tuning Use of Mobile Technologies
Candidates in political campaigns are increasingly using cellphones and mobile technologies, which is fundamentally transforming politics in the U.S. and around the world, said speakers at a Brookings Institution panel on mobile technology’s impact on political campaigns. Experts said how candidates are using mobile technologies is getting more sophisticated as the 2012 campaign season unfolds.
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"The geolocation features along with mobile technology are enabling candidates to target ads geographically at specific events,” said Brookings Vice President Darrell West. “We'll be seeing a lot more of that in this political campaign.” Mobile technology is also transforming field organization, West said. “The Obama campaign this year is allowing volunteers to log onto the Obama website with their Facebook account and access any tool, which you typically would get in a campaign field office,” he said. “People can make calls. They can identify supporters. And then they enter that information into a comprehensive database. This gives the campaign realtime data on how people are responding.”
The Romney campaign is using mobile video as a tool supporters can share with their friends as they make a case for why they should also support the Republican candidate for president, West said. In Berlin, the Green Party has a mobile app that “brings party billboards to life,” he said. People point their phone at a billboard and an app launches that plays a mobile ad for the party, discussing environmental issues.
The one area where mobile phones aren’t playing a big role is in fundraising because of a Federal Election Commission rule that prohibits people from using text to make small contributions to political campaigns, West said. “The FEC was concerned about disclosure rules and fear that either foreigners or corporations would direct gifts to politicians,” he said. “In my view … the FEC ruling is shortsighted because it discourages small donors in political races.” Two states, California and Maryland, have authorized text contributions for candidates for state offices, West said. Mobile contributions are also permitted in some countries including the U.K. and South Africa.
Scott Goodstein, CEO of Revolution Messaging, said mobile outreach was relatively simple when he worked for the Obama campaign prior to the 2008 election. The campaign asked supporters to text the word “join” to “OBAMA” (62262). “You all saw it at different rallies and events and it was exciting,” Goodstein said. “But now, I think, mobile has grown up and advanced and people are demanding more from a text message program. They want breaking news on their phones. They're going to get upset if they join your mobile program and there’s not breaking alerts as to what’s happening.” Goodstein predicted that how text is used will continue to evolve. Today, people are complaining about getting too many text messages from candidates, similar to complaints about robocalls when that technology got started in the 1990s, he said: “As new technologies come out they can be used for good but also they're being used very stealthily and very quickly for evil.”
Wireless carriers offer one of the few impediments to more use of texts in campaigns, Goodstein said. “If you think about it, text messaging still is not approved as First Amendment [sanctioned] freedom of speech,” he said. “You have to still get a short code. It’s expensive to set up. … We're still in our infancy of getting these technologies to really start humming with the campaign.”
"The big thing I learned was that even if you think you don’t have a mobile campaign happening right now, you do,” said Katie Harbath of Facebook, formerly with the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “There are people visiting your website. There are people who are reading your emails on mobile devices. If you're not looking to see what your website and what your content looks like on those you're really doing a disservice to your users and, probably, losing folks.” The use of mobile technologies in campaigns is here to stay, Harbath said. “I think this is a fundamental part of the transformation of, really, technology going to the next level,” she said.
Mobile technology used by election observers during recent elections in Uganda and Afghanistan helped curb election fraud in both countries, allowing quick analysis of results at various polling places to look for evidence of tampering with voting results, said Clark Gibson, chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.