How Can We Use Social Media To Foster Voter Education?

Educating yourself on the various initiatives hitting our ballots today can be a daunting task as you try and  cut through the emotion and muddied language around each issue. The standard voting guides do a decent job trying to share the pros/cons of each initiative, but more times than not, I find myself asking people around me – in my online and offline network – what their opinions are, to help bring more light to what that initiative actually means TO ME and to those I care about most.

It begs the question – what else we can do with the technology of today to capture those conversations and help inform others asking the same questions?

Join California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, on Wednesday, May 27th at 7pm in San Francisco, CA for a brainstorming session where we dig into this topic in an effort to find new ways of engaging and informing voters using Social Media.

Contribute your thoughts ahead of time on socialvoter.org (use the form on the right sidebar to contribute), or you can tweet/blog your thoughts using the #socialvoter tag.

There is no fee to attend but they would like you to register so they know you are coming. Simply click ‘Attending‘ on the Facebook event. We plan to live stream the event for those who cannot participate in person. We will also be capturing some of the conversation on our SMC San Francisco Twitter account if you would like to follow along that way.

I am happy Social Media Club can play an active role in government 2.0 discussions. Earlier this month, our San Antonio chapter was asked to participate in covering the mayoral race using the Social Media tools at hand. There are several programs in the works, locally and nationally, where we will be extending this dialogue – so stay tuned!