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Text messages could help rally young voters to the polls on Election Day, a new study by a politics graduate student suggests.

The study, conducted by Aaron Strauss GS, found that text message reminders sent to young people on or before the day of the 2006 midterm elections increased the likelihood that they would vote by 4.2 percentage points.

"Cell phones are great because it is [a] personal way to get the message, but it doesn't interrupt you," Strauss said.

The day before the November 2006 election, researchers from Princeton and the University of Michigan sent out 4,000 text messages to young people who had provided their cell phone numbers when they registered to vote.

In a subsequent survey, 59 percent of the recipients said the text message encouraged them to vote. Twenty-three percent said they found the message to be bothersome.

Though the number who were spurred to head to the polls may seem small, Strauss said every vote counts, especially in a close election like the 2000 presidential race.

"It absolutely makes a big difference," said Strauss, who coauthored the study with Allison Dale, a doctoral student in political science at the University of Michigan.

In a cost-benefit analysis of text message reminders, the pluses clearly win out. Text messaging costs just $1.56 per additional vote generated, as compared to quality phone calls, which cost $20 per additional vote, and direct mail, which costs $67.

Text messages are a convenient way to reach mobile students. "People check text messages constantly," politics concentrator Jon Hwang '09 said.

But Sarah Breslow '08, co-president of Princeton Votes (P-Votes), said that while "it's good that they are using technology to increase voter registration," she was not sure the project would be effective on campus.

P-Votes is a student group that works to register voters on campus and educate them on campaign issues.

"I think that in a campus as small as Princeton the ways we do get out the vote ... are probably effective enough," she said. Breslow acknowledged, however, that text reminders might help students who have to mail in absentee ballots weeks before the election.

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Evan Magruder '08, co-president of P-Votes, suggested the group might consider using text messages in the future. "[The system] is close to the goals of P-Votes," he said.

Magruder added that such a program might have drawbacks, however, such as people's reluctance to give out cell numbers or the possibility that they would find a text message reminder an invasion of privacy.

Ria Dutta '08, a Wilson School concentrator, seconded Magruder's concerns about privacy. "I think people are wary of giving out their cell phone numbers since it is more personal than email, and they do not want to get telemarketer calls on their cells," she said in an email.

Hwang suggested that voter mobilization groups could explain the purpose of providing cell numbers on the voter registration forms. "If people knew why they were giving it out, they'd be more inclined to participate," he said.

But Breslow noted that, ironically, the voters who agree to receive the messages may be least likely to need them. "The people who are signing up for the reminders are probably already civically minded," Breslow said.

Others noted that text messages are hardly the only way to find out that Election Day has arrived. "There are always media reminders ... which make it nigh impossible to forget that a certain day is voting day," Dutta said in an email.

Though Strauss' study was nonpartisan, some 2008 presidential candidates are using text messages to reach out to their supporters. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Mitt Romney and John Edwards all have options on their websites that let people register to receive text message updates on the campaign.

Next, Strauss said he wants to study the effect of peer-to-peer texting on voter turnout. He would like to encourage civic-minded people to text message their friends on Election Day.