Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) is moving to roll out its “I’m a voter” feature across the entire world. This feature was popular with users during the 2012 election of President Barack Obama. More than 9 million American citizens clicked the “I’m’a voter” button during the election, to indicate to their social media connections, that they had cast their ballot. Spurred on by this success, and in line with Facebooks aim to get ever more integrated into its users lives, it announced on Monday that the feature will be offered for various elections around the world this year.
The feature was already in use a few weeks ago as it was available for Facebook users in India when they were choosing their new Prime Minister. Over 4 million Indians used the button to show that they had voted. Facebook is planning to offer the button during the upcoming elections for the European parliament, the congressional mid-term elections later this year, and national elections in countries such as Columbia, South Korea, Sweden, New Zealand, and Brazil.
Facebook also expects that more than 400 million of its user will see the function on their feed at some time this year. This constitutes approximately one third of the 1.1 billion active daily users. Research conducted in 2012 into whether the button has any effect, found that during the 2010 mid-term elections in the United States, more than 340,000 additional people voted, after seeing their online friends had done so. Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook’s Washington office said that “There is a real social multiplier effect when people see on Facebook that their friends have voted, they themselves are motivated to vote.”
