Campaign for Voting

Tuesday, October 7 marked the final day for Illinois residents to register to vote (1). This date echoed across the country as the final chance for numerous states to secure a spot in this November’s historic election. As many Americans scrambled to their local libraries to register, campaigns pushed them there. This past week, the main campaign hasn’t been for John McCain or Barack Obama, but America’s newest sweetheart – voting.

The Obama and McCain camps focused much of their campaigns on registering citizens to vote during the past months. Michelle Obama paid particular attention to the importance of voting. In appearances on The View and Larry King Live, she lingered on the subject for a considerable amount of time. In September, she held a conference call with various college newspapers stressing the same importance (2). Mrs. Obama spent the week preceding the largest voter registration deadline, Oct. 7, at college campuses in battleground states encouraging students to vote, even if it isn’t for her husband (3).

Nonpartisan voting campaigns shined their spotlights on the youth vote. Declare Yourself is a campaign initiated in 2004 to encourage particularly young people to register to vote. Celebrities and technology drive these campaigns. The opening page on the Declare Yourself website hosts a photograph of Jessica Alba with her mouth and body bound by black tape and a statement: “only you can silence yourself.” Declare Yourself offers free concerts by Death Cab for Cutie or The Decemberists for the college campus that registers the most students (4).

A campaign run by MTV uses similar celebrity appeal. Choose or Loose helps students register their peers to vote along with providing celeb-fused election related articles and information on the candidates for students. For instance, Choose or Lose brought attention to the Public Service Announcement on voting created by Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and other stars (5). Countless organizations with the same celebrity tactics including the WWE (6) and the Rock the Vote campaign (7) don't care who youth vote for as long as they're voting.

Is the celebrity appeal working? Are WE, the youth of America, going to exercise our right to vote? November 4 holds the answers.



Celeb-Fused PSA on Voting



Michelle Obama on Larry King Live



Sources:

(1) http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1072705/deadlines_and_how_to_register_to_vote.html

(2) http://www.dailyevergreen.com/story/26269

(3) http://www.coloradodaily.com/news/2008/oct/01/michelle-obama-urges-cu-students-vote/

(4) http://www.declareyourself.com/index.php

(5) http://think.mtv.com/044FDFFFF0098989A001600993A6C/

(6) http://vote.wwe.com/

(7) http://www.rockthevote.com/home.html