California Democrats use Facebook to find non-voters

[stopbush]

Reporting from Sacramento —

The California Democratic Party unveiled a new tool in its get-out-the-vote kit Monday: a first-of-its-kind Facebook application that sifts through a user's friends list, matches it with the friends' party registrations and voting histories, and pops out a list of people who vote Democratic but don't regularly vote.

It then encourages users to tell their non-voting friends to cast a ballot Nov. 2.

"We're asking their friends to help us nudge those voters," said Tenoch Flores, a spokesman for the party.

Flores said the development of the Facebook application was made possible by funding from Chris Kelly, Facebook's former chief privacy officer, who lost last June's Democratic primary for state attorney general.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-facebook-20101026,0,6239551.story?track=rss

Remember how the Rs got buried by Obama in 08 because Obama had a great GOTV effort AND was a master of new media? Remember Rove bragging that there were the poll numbers and that there were the "real numbers" which Rove had to the exclusion of everybody else?

Well, looks like the Ds are ahead of the GOTV curve again this year, and I believe it will pay dividends.

What if the big story on Nov 3 is that the Rs and the MSM were shown for the dinosaur institutions they are when it comes to getting your political message out? What if it turns out that the Rs relying on big TV ad buys and big media ownership ain't what gives one a nedge in elections anymore?

Could be sweet!