LONDON-As election campaigns kick off for the May 5 election in the United Kingdom, the Liberal Democrats are making the most of mobile technology to reach out to younger, technology-savvy voters.
Voters in the Greater Reading area, which has a high concentration of high-tech companies, will be invited to calculate their alternative budgets on the cost of the recent Iraq War using a Java application developed by Masabi.
The Iraqcost application allows users to distribute the $9.4 billion spent on the war into alternative areas of spending, such as health, education, policing and the environment. Users then can see how their own budgets compare with the national totals and pass the ‘game’ on to friends via short message service.
“Making use of new technology is a good way to engage a section of the population who are used to mobile phones and texting, but don’t find most political campaigning of interest,” commented John Howson, Reading East’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats. “This way they can tell us what they think about the key issue of the past four years.”
