Justin Oberman reports on the way Michigan’s “Coalition for Progress” used text messaging to reach young voters prior to the recent election:

Maine is not the only state that is taking advantage of the youth medium we call the cell phone this election. last Monday Michigan’s Coalition For Progress unveiled their mobile “My Future” campaign which harnesses the power of this cutting edge technology to engage young voters in this upcoming election.

While the the coalition using the medium to push out messages like “Did you know that Republicans in the Legislature want to make it legal for pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions? Vote Nov 7 - Move MI forward!” like the like Lamarche campaign, the coalition also looks beyond SMS as simply a push out message tool.

The coalition is also holding a contest where someone can text VOTE1 or VOTE2, all the way to 5, to 388873 and they’ll receive a trivia question about Republican Governor nominee Dick Devos. The trivia questions are silly and a little funny. Each of the questions are multiple choice. If you answer correctly you get one message back and, of course, if you answer incorrectly, you get a different one. The really cool thing is that the questions and answers are phrased in such a way to educate and reinforce the coalitions message. And, because they are not officially a campaign, the SMS trivia will enter you into a sweepstakes in which two people will receive a 30g video iPod with the Coalition For Progress’ logo emblazoned on the back.