Vote for president via... Facebook?

Looks like Facebook is the latest social network to put its marshmallow in the political campfire. Twitter has its Election 2008, there are a ton of third-party social network programs to use to watch the election results roll in, and there's even the MyBarackObama social network for devout supporters of the Obama / Biden ticket.

The Facebook Causes application has an "election rally" tool that allows users to campaign for their candidate(s) or cause(s) of choice but "donating" their status space. Simply open the application, select the cause or position you are most passionate about and your Facebook status will automatically be set to campaign (if you did this pre-election day, it should've automatically changed over today. As of 6 a.m. PT today, 1,149,790 users were campaigning via Facebook Causes -- a jump from just over 400K yesterday afternoon.

(Click to enlarge)

As you can see, I can select either presidential ticket or create a write-in vote for a candidate or issue, or just get out the vote. If I were to use this, here is what my status message might look like:

The count isn't exactly accurate -- the way this reads is that I am one of over a million users to get out the vote for No on Prop. 8 when really I'm one of many who have used the application. It's a novel idea, and a cool way for those folks who can't get out today and hit the polling stations to campaign for their causes. Some might say it's silly, but anything that encourages voting over apathy for such a critical election is a good find.