Residents of Washington State will soon be able to access voter registration forms on the secretary of state’s official Facebook page, according to an Associated Press report.
Voters will not be registering directly through Facebook, but rather using the social network to access voter registration forms stored on the secretary of state’s official Facebook page. Facebook will seek permission to access user data and automatically fill out the applicant’s name and birthdate. Voters will still be required to provide a license or state ID number.
Washington State, Facebook, and Microsoft worked together to develop the application, according to the report.
“In this age of social media and more people going online for services, this is a natural way to introduce people to online registration and leverage the power of friends on Facebook to get more people registered,” co-director of elections, Shane Hamlin, told the AP.
Hamlin assured the Associated Press that voters need not worry about having their personal information collected by Facebook.
“You are giving your information to us, not Facebook,” he told the AP.
Washington is the first state to implement this sort of online voter registration.
