Getting people to vote!

StickK.com has started commitment contracts to incentivize voters to vote in their local elections. As Dean Karlan writes in an FT op-ed,

"StickK can verify (using publicly available data) whether people fulfill their commitment to vote. If they do not, StickK e-mails their friends or charges their credit card as punishment for failure. If money, individuals choose where the money gets sent; but most choose to send it to a charity (chosen by stickK, so the individual gets no specific pleasure from knowing where the money goes), or even harsher, to an 'anti charity', a politically polarizing charity such as the Bill Clinton Presidential Library or the George W. Bush Presidential Library."

(HT: Freakonomics)