Facebook Elections

College-age politics junkies like myself will be excited to see the new Facebook elections section. Facebookers can now proudly link to their favorite candidates' profiles.

The section just went up Thursday with relatively little fanfair. From the looks of things, most of the profiled politicians haven't even heard about it. Most of the profiles feature a generic American flag picture and contain only basic information. With luck the political community will take full advantage of the free exposure.

I wouldn't count on a lot of politicians putting serious time or energy into Facebook campaigning. College students are notoriously bad voters, and they definitely don't have any extra cash to donate. Still, Facebook seems like a good way for candidates to show their youthful exuberance, and it might become a good way to wrangle volunteers.

With luck, Facebook will even be privy to some some fantastic political blunders. Maybe Virginia senator George Allen will accidently mention "keeping darkie down" as one of his interests. Of course, he'll get out of it by explaining he doesn't even know what "darkie" means.

Of course, this assumes that politicians and their campaign staff even know what Facebook is. I seriously doubt Joe Leiberman or Ted Stevens spend a lot of time on the web.