Election Commission Partners With Facebook To Reach Out To New Voters Via Social Media 

In it’s latest initiative to reach out to the social media savvy youth of the country, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has partnered with Facebook to remind new 18-year-olds to register themselves as voters.

Under the partnership, all users turning 18 between today (November 28) and December 31 will receive a notification to register themselves with the ECI along with the birthday wishes. To those who are already 18, a similar notification will be sent on November 30.

Clicking the “Register Now” button will take the user to the National Voters’ Services Portal.

The ECI hopes that the partnership will help them fulfil their objectives of "No Voter to be Left Behind’’ and “Every Vote Counts”.

Announcing the drive, Achal Kumar Jyoti, the Chief Election Commissioner of the ECI, said, "I am happy to announce that the Election Commission of India has launched a special drive to enrol all prospective and eligible young citizens of India as voters who are turning 18 years or more than 18 years on 1 January, 2018. This partnership of Election Commission with Facebook for the dissemination of information will help us reach out the young digital community of India in fulfilling our mission.”

Facebook has over 200 million users in India, with the young population forming the bulk of the user base. Facebook has been working on indigenisation and bringing in more and more users online and hence provides an audience ripe for outreach through social initiatives. The remainder would be sent in 13 Indian languages, English, Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Assamese, Marathi and Oriya to cover most of the country.

The ECI and Facebook have collaborated on such drives in the past too.