Twitter wants you to vote early in the 2020 US presidential election. The platform is rolling out a series of prompts, hashtags, and push alerts dedicated to early voting.
Twitter Promotes Early Voting
In a post on the Twitter Blog, Twitter acknowledged that the voting process might look a bit different for the 2020 presidential election, stating:
As voters face unprecedented challenges when casting their ballot in the upcoming 2020 US elections, Twitter is doing what we can to ensure that people have access to the reliable information they need in order to exercise their right to vote.
Because of the possible challenges related to the election, the platform announced several initiatives it’s taking to encourage early voting. You’ll now start to see a new prompt on your timeline. This notification will encourage you to find out more information about early voting.
If you click the Get Started link, you’ll be redirected to BallotReady, where you can find local voting information. The prompt also comes with a Encourage others with a Tweet button. By selecting that, you can send out an encouraging Tweet that contains the same link to BallotReady.
Twitter is also rolling out hashtags specifically for early voting: #VoteEarly, #IVoted, #IVotedEarly, and #YoVoté. Any Tweets that have these hashtags will have special features, including a ballot box emoji and a Like button that transforms into a ballot box when pressed.
Lastly, Twitter has also unveiled a push alert that sends you to Twitter’s public service announcements about early voting. As a final note on the blog post, Twitter mentioned that it “will continue to share reminders with voting deadlines and resources” up until Election Day.
Twitter has been doing a lot of work to encourage voting, and to stop the spread of misinformation about the election. On top of the features outlined above, Twitter has also created an election hub to provide credible information about the 2020 US election. In addition, the platform is also trying to discourage Retweets ahead of the US election.
Has Twitter’s Voting Encouragement Paid Off?
In the same post on the Twitter Blog, Twitter noted that nine out of 10 Twitter users are registered to vote, and are planning to vote in the 2020 election. Whether these users were encouraged by Twitter or not, its efforts may be paying off.
Other social media networks have made similar moves to encourage voting and to dispel political rumors. In an effort to prevent confusion surrounding the election, both Facebook and TikTok have also created information hubs for the 2020 election.
