Some consider President-elect Barack Obama's campaign to be the most successful grassroots (organized from the ground up) campaign in history. A large part of this organization was done via e-mail and text messaging. Over the course of the campaign, the Obama team compiled a list of more than 10 million names and e-mail addresses to whom the campaign team sent constant updates, reminders and fundraising requests.

A widespread tenet in political science is that one of the best ways to encourage an individual to vote is simply to ask. Barack Obama, a self-proclaimed BlackBerry addict, posed that question to masses of people via e-mail. One e-mail the Obama Campaign sent the day before Election Day read in part, "We've asked you to do a lot over the course of this campaign, and you've always come through. Right now, I'm asking you to do one last thing—vote tomorrow, and make sure everyone you know votes, too." It also included links like Find your Polling Location, Donate Now and Where to Volunteer. It was signed simply, "Barack." For millions of Americans, Barack Obama personally asked them to vote.

Other "personalized" e-mails came from Michelle Obama, campaign manager David Plouffe, and vice presidential candidate Joe Biden. The e-mails were sent out in addition to text messages that reminded supporters to vote, told voters where to go to vote, and, perhaps most notably, informed voters who Obama had selected as his running mate.

Obama aides have insisted that the use of e-mail and text messaging will not stop now that the campaign is over. They plan on expanding the White House communications operation to include e-mail, giving them the ability to reach out to supporters by means other than the often-filtered mainstream media. Just as President John F. Kennedy reinvented the way television was used to communicate to the American people, President-elect Obama plans to revamp the use of the Internet, e-mail and texting to correspond with his constituency.