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If South Korean elections can be swung by smart mobs, what's that say about US politics? Mind you, the voter turnout was a mere 70%, which is the lowest ever for a South Korean presidental election. Conventional wisdom says that Roh Moo-hyun benefited from text messaging because it helped him get out the vote, but the low turnout seems to contraindicate that. Possibly the turnout would have been slimmer if not for the smart mobs? Hard to say.

Anyhow, here's the prescription for whichever US party wants to use cell phones effectively. First, don't telemarket. That's intrusive. You want to use the communication channels in non-intrusive ways. Second, collect contact info. When you run a get out the vote rally, find out if your voters like SMS, AIM, or email for mobile communication, and get the info you need to send messages via the preferred method. Third, don't overuse it. Election day, you betcha, send a message asking if they've voted yet (and when they reply, mark down the answer; it's all automatable). Do it again before the polls close, for those who didn't say "yeah, I voted." Maybe a few messages here and there in the week before to keep buzz going.

Use messaging more heavily for the activists. Definitely use it on election day. If your poll monitors don't have some way to take a picture and transmit it back to HQ instantly, you're missing a big bet -- you want to be able to get the word out as quickly as possible if something happens.

Betcha none of this happens by 2004.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

sweetcode is cool. I am sick. Thus, few words surround this pointer. I barely managed a half-clever title. Cool for sysadmins and programmers, that is; not sure anyone else would care.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Oliver Willis (blogging maniac) is already pushing the SMS thang, in his unofficial John Edwards weblog. Mind you, it's one guy, but one guy can have a lot of leverage these days.

Looks like he's using Upoc to do mass SMS messaging. I guess it's a start, but he's going to need to get email and AIM into the mix, too. The legendary Randomness observes, in response to my thoughts earlier today, that "there just isn't the SMS culture in the States that there is in South Korea, Japan, or Europe." Truth. But I think it's gonna be email and AIM on mobile devices that makes it happen in the US.

We don't have an SMS culture. We do have a serious instant messaging culture. We're gonna see widespread AIM/email on cell phones before we see a lot of American kids using SMS. The free Nokia I got for signing up with T-Mobile (the 3390) came with AIM built in, so I think it's hit the commodity point.

Anyhow, I signed up for his group, not so much because I'm an Edwards supporter but because I want to see how it gets used.