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Imagine a situation where you are the campaign manager or internet outreach director of a political campaign in the mid to late 90's. Mostly young people are the ones who are online, or at least they are the ones who are using the Internet to the fullest. Not that many people have access to broadband in their homes yet, but a sizable portion of the population has internet access either at their workplaces or at other public venues. WiFi is still something reserved to early adopters, but cellphone use is widespread and text messaging is as common as a phone call.
What strategies would you use to mobilize voters under this circumstances? Take into account this may be a close election, and turnout and a little convincing is all you need to make otherwise non-voters actually go to the polls and vote.
A little context: As you may know, the discussion in Costa Rica about whether to approve or reject CAFTA has been going on for a few years now, with huge ups and downs in public support and opposition to the treaty. Costa Rica is the only country member of CAFTA who has not ratified the Agreement yet, and there's time until March 2008 before entrance expires.
Yesterday, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled that a group of lawyers led by José Miguel Corrales, a former Congressman and Presidential candidate, can start gathering the required signatures of 5% of registered voters in order to call for the vote.
Realizing that if Corrales takes the 9 months he is allowed to gather the signatures would mean Costa Rica is definitely out of CAFTA, today the President will probably call the referendum himself, meaning it will probably be held by late September or early October.
Right now, Costa Rica is starting to experiment the influence of the internet in politics. A fairly active, albeit small and young blogosphere is starting to get notoriety, and all sides of the political spectrum are starting to take some shy steps into the online world. The CAFTA referendum presents a golden opportunity to use all available online tools in order to defeat the agreement, and this is the reason why I'm looking for your advice. Throughout the years I've seen, read about and studied lots of different examples in the US, ranging from McCain's $1 million online to MoveOn and to the Dean campaign, but I guess I'm looking for some first hand experience.
Given all these, what would you do?
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