UK Government Using Twitter To Remind Citizens To Register To Vote

In an aim to boost the number of voters before the registration closes on 20 April, UK’s Electoral Commission has began to tap Twitter as a new medium, reminding people to register to vote in the General Election.

The commission, through Twitter, sends a reminder  to users in the UK through their timelines, stating the remaining seven-day timeframe to register. It also provides a link with the hashtag #RegisterToVote.

The Electoral Commission also sent a tweet that provided a link to to the GOV.UK website, which provides additional information on online registration.

“It’s fantastic that Twitter is working with us to remind millions of people that it only takes a few minutes to fill in a form and there’s just a week left before the deadline,” the Electoral Commission director of communications Alex Robertson said.

The commission’s efforts also seem to be in line with the 2015 General Election’s trend of active use of technologies such as social media, as it has been used to measure sentiment towards different parties.

More than 2 million political conversations were seen over the past month alone in the UK, where over 1.1 million of which have focused on economic living standards across social networks, according to research by UK company Brandwatch.

Over 1.5 million tweets from voters were also recorded during the #LeadersDebate, according to Twitter and the #BattleforNumber10 became a worldwide trending topic in March.

About half of UK Twitter users between 18 to 34 also said they became interested in or joined a political cause from information they received on Twitter, according to a recent survey.

“People come to Twitter to listen to conversations and opinions on political and social issues, and find out about how politics affects the things that matter to them, ” Twitter UK News and Government Partnerships Joanna Geary said.