Social-Media
Facebook and Instagram will pin a vote-by-mail account to the top of feeds.
Starting this week, anyone of the voting age in the U.S. can continue to see educational videos at the top of Instagram and Facebook, providing advice and state-specific instructions about how to vote by mail. The videos will be available in both English and Spanish.
Voting-by-mail videos will run on Facebook for four straight days in each province, beginning from October 10th to October 18th, depending on the local registration deadline. On Instagram, the videos will be distributed in all 50 states on 15 October and 16 October, accompanied by other updates of polling information over the next two days.
Videos let voters know when they can return a ballot in person, instruct them to carefully sign additional envelopes that may be required, and encourage returning ballots as soon as possible, while keeping in mind the time limits for postmarking. Facebook will continue to provide more state-specific information on elections in the voting information center devoted to the 2020 referendum.
Perhaps more than in the past years, app developers have taken the mantle by nudging their consumers to vote in the U.S. general election. From Snapchat to Credit Karma, it's hard to open an app without having to register — and that's a positive thing. Snapchat claims it has enrolled about 400,000 eligible voters with its own reminders, and Facebook reports that it has helped 2.5 million people register to vote this year.
Voting rights activists are worried that the rapid rise in voting by mail in 2020 could lead to a substantial number of ballots being tossed out — a problem foreshadowed by the half a million votes cast in the state primaries. Many of these ballots did not reach deadlines or were considered to be null due to other errors committed by the electors when they were loaded.
In Florida, voters who were young, non-white or voted for the first time were twice as likely to get their votes cast out as white voters in the 2018 election, according to polling by the ACLU.
Adding to the issues, the state laws differ and can be specific and frustrating for new electors to vote by mail. In Pennsylvania, the most likely nation to vote on the outcome of the 2020 election, recent laws against "naked votes" mean that any ballot not cast in an extra hidden sleeve will be thrown out. In other nations, confidentiality sleeves have long been optional.
