New 'Powered by MoveOn' Tools Put People in the Driver's Seat of Election

Cutting-Edge Web 2.0 Tools Allow Citizen Activists to Organize Their Social Networks in Critical Election Year

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Starting today, MoveOn.org Political Action will roll out a new "powered by MoveOn" online toolset that uses web 2.0 technology to engage citizens, build Progressive communities, and increase involvement in legislative and electoral campaigns. All of the tools put individuals in the driver's seat in activating their own social networks.

VotePoke (www.votepoke.org) was developed in collaboration with Catalist, a premier provider of voter file data to Progressive organizations. The first-of-its-kind webpage allows voters nationwide to look up their voter registration status online and get registered quickly and easily. They can also invite their friends and family to view their status and quickly and easily resister as well through Rock the Vote. VotePoke will launch this week in many of the February 5th primary states, where MoveOn has approximately 1.7 million members.

League of Young Voters/MoveOn Youth Primary on FaceBook (http://apps.facebook.com/theleague/) allows Facebook users to vote for the candidate of their choice and declare publicly the issues that are driving them to the polls this year. Over 10,000 young folks have voted so far, primary voters can invite their Facebook networks to vote with a few keystrokes. Results will be tallied nationally, locally and by school. The application was launched on January 3rd and voting will continue through February 5th.

Call Congress Blog Widget will allow any blog-reader or web-surfer to quickly get in touch with his or her elected officials. After readers enter their phone number and ZIP code, the system will automatically patch them through to the correct Representative or Senator. The widget will be launched in the next few weeks.

ActivList will facilitate Progressive community-building nationwide by providing a decentralized local Progressive event calendar. Major Progressive sites will feature the calendar application, and people can type in their ZIP codes to find what's happening in their communities. ActivList will launch later this month.

SignOn will allow citizens to use the successful MoveOn technology to launch their own online petitions about local issues, contact Congress and build networks of their own. SignOn will launch in the next several months.

"MoveOn's new tools give our members exactly what they need to get their friends and colleagues involved in the upcoming political battles," said Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn. "More involvement from the local to the national levels means that real people will have a real voice in shaping the new direction of our country."