SMS Notices are a convenient and successful notice method for voters, as most people have their cell phones near them at all times. ElectionBuddy allows administrators to send notices through SMS also known as texting.
SMS notices include either an access link, which will take the voter to a page to enter their access key and password (if required), or a ballot link, which has the voter credentials embedded and takes them directly to the ballot. Either of these can be used to vote instantly from a cell phone! If voter turnout is an issue for you, using SMS notifications can help you increase turnout by increasing voter convenience.
How to Set Up SMS Notices
SMS notices require the administrator to know their voters' cell phone numbers. To set up SMS notices:
- On the Notice Page, select "SMS notices" and any other notice type you want to use for your election.
- You can choose to either send notices as soon as the vote opens, at a future date and time, or only when voters request individually, on a voter-per-voter basis.
- Select the default country code for your voter's cell phone numbers. If you have voters living in different countries, select the country where the majority of the voters live.
- On the Voters Page, enter the voters' cell phone numbers with the country code. For example, 1-123-456-7890 for the North American-based voter. If you do not know the country code for a voter, try looking for it here, or ask Google.
- Be sure to add in your voter's complete number with country and area code in case they have a number outside of your selected default country.
Notes About SMS Notices
- SMS notices are treated the same as email notices in ElectionBuddy. If there is an error in a voter's cell phone number, then ElectionBuddy will notify you about the error on the "Voter List and Status" page when the election is running. SMS reminders can be sent to voters who are using SMS notices.
- SMS notices are constrained by size. Please only use ASCII (A-Z, 1-9, etc.) characters, and not other Unicode characters, as these characters are larger than your standard ASCII characters. They may cause your message to be too large, and impact deliverability.
If you only have cell phone numbers for some of your voters, you can still utilize SMS notices for those voters! You can use more than one notice type for any election - this is called a "multi-channel" election. For example, if you had email addresses for all your voters, but only cell phone numbers for some of them, you would select both email and SMS notices, and then when inputting your voter list, including the cell phone numbers that you have, as well as all the email addresses. Voters who have both cell phone number information and email address information will receive notices in both ways, making them all the more likely to vote.
To learn more about on-demand Notices, please see Manual Notice Delivery at Voters Request.
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