Be Sure to Facebank for Bernie Today!

[mhatrw]

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/bernie-sanders-pins-super-tuesday-turnout-hopes-facebanking/

Using a tool called Bernie Friend Finder, Sanders supporters can find all of their Facebook friends who live in a Super Tuesday state. They can also find friends of friends in those states who have “liked” the Bernie Sanders page on the social network. The tool provides people with a sample script—much like they’d get if they were phone-banking—which they can copy, adapt, and send via Facebook message.

The tool was designed by a team of volunteers over the weekend in hopes of turning the swell of online activism around Sanders into actual votes. “People say that they love Bernie online, but that only matters if you vote,” says Ana Jamborcic, one of the volunteer developers, who also helped build the campaign’s social media organizing tool Connect with Bernie. “Voter turnout is abysmal in this country. Anything we can do to help turnout numbers, especially for Bernie, is the least we can do.”

Getting Around Facebook

The Bernie Friend Finder quickly gained traction on the Bernie Sanders for President subreddit—the campaign’s grassroots online hub—and has received tens of thousands of page views in just two days, with 80 percent of people clicking through to actually use the tool, Jamborcic says. Still, she admits it’s tough to quantify the impact the tool is having.