There's an app for that!

Building on the spread of online voter registration, Project Vote is preparing to launch a voter registration application for the iPad, the new tablet computer released by Apple this spring.

Traditional pen-and-clipboard voter registration drives produce reams of paper for both organizations leading the registration effort and election officials charged with adding voters to the rolls, Mike Slater, Project Vote executive director said, driving up costs.

Slater anticipates that the iPad voter registration application, i-Vote, will make voter registration cheaper and more efficient. “We think it will also reduce the likelihood of voter registration fraud,” Slater said. “It’s a potential win-win for both election officials and voter registration organizations.”

The application will “fit behind an iPad like a carbon copy,” Slater said, allowing voter registration organizations to retain the information they are legally allowed to capture in each state so voters can be contacted as an election approaches. Data entry alone cost Project Vote $500,000 in the 2008 election cycle. The iPad voter registration application “will be a huge savings in terms of data entry,” Slater said.

- Quoted from the Pew Center's electionline newsletter

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