Why Vote??? Make your own video statement!

Rock the Vote’s brand new event on AOL UnCut Video has just gone live and we’re very excited about it. Check it out at http://uncutvideo.aol.com/events/Rock-the-Vote.

This year, rather than showing you why different celebrities are going to vote, we want you to tell us why you’re voting. We’re asking the question, “Why vote?” with the hope that you’ll tell the world what makes you want to Rock the Vote. Simply put, we want to hear your statement.

For this campaign, we’ve chosen to host an event on AOL’s UnCut Video, a user-generated-video website that has great tech specs. With UnCut Video you can upload your statement directly to our group from any of a number of recording devices—camcorder, webcam, digital camera, cell phone, etc.—making it incredibly easy to record your statement and share it with the world.

What motivates you to vote? The war in Iraq? Student debt? Global warming? Those “I voted” stickers? Regardless of your reason, let’s take this chance to tell the world why we’re voting. Keep in mind that we’re all voters, not directors, there's no need to make a music video. Just push record, make your statement, and upload it to our event.

My colleagues at Rock the Vote and some of our friends have already posted some of our statements. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Check out the new Google Earth 2006 US Election Guide

Google Earth has just launched a new set of voter participation tools that help users register to vote and learn more about candidates for Congress. They asked me to write about it for the Google Blog; you can read my commentary here.

Could the next step be using Google Earth to find your polling place? What else could it do?

Thanks to Google for taking this important step, its a very promising direction.

Politicians turn to peer-to-peer websites to attract young voters

As the November 7 election draws near more attention is being focused on young voters. Media outlets all across the country are running stories about how politicians are going after young voters and how Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have the opportunity to shape the election.

Take for example Penn State University’s Daily Collegian, which ran a story today entitled, "Politicians using sites to reel in young voters.” The article discusses how politicians are turning to peer-to-peer websites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube to attract young voters.

Could this phenomenon of engaging young voters online galvanize youth voter turnout? We at Rock the Vote certainly think so. That’s why we’re active on Facebook and MySpace and will soon be collecting short video statements about what makes Americans want to vote on AOL’s UnCut Video.

The press is taking notice. Campus newspapers like Marshall’s The Parthenon and UConn’s The Daily Campus have run stories about our Facebook group and our efforts to engage college students online. And we’ve gotten mention in other outlets like PC World and The International Herald Tribune.

Facebook and Rock the Vote launch voter campaign!

Today, Rock the Vote launched a new campaign to register and engage young voters on Facebook. We're pretty excited about it!

We met with Facebook a little more than a week ago to develop ideas. The team there is very enthusiastic about using Facebook to give young people the tools they need to be active in the political process. A series of conversations and some serious hard work by both teams resulted in what you see today at Facebook's website.

What is it? Well, basically, its a cutting-edge voter registration drive, to be followed by an equally innovative turnout drive. Rock the Vote is organizing it and Facebook is helping to promote it. We're doing this as part of a nationwide campaign to register voters for 2006 funded by Young Voter Strategies.

The first goal of our campaign is voter registration. Deadlines are coming up and we don't want anyone to be shut out!

[We think advance voter registration deadlines are an absolute fraud, by the way--people should be able to register on Election Day if they miss the advance deadline.]

Facebook users who are not registered to vote will be able to click on the REGISTER TO VOTE button on our group site. That takes them to our online registration tool, where all they have to do is fill out their registration form, print it up, sign it and mail it in before the deadline.

More importantly, Facebook users can invite their friends to the RTV group in order to register to vote. What is going to make this effort take off is peer-to-peer interactions that get the group showing up in Facebook's news feed.

We're also looking for student groups (high school and college) to get rolling in their local networks by promoting the online tools. There's lots to come---particularly once we shift to voter turnout. Check out the tool kit for how you can get more involved.

And let us know on the discussion board there how we can use these tools to get people involved. Peer-to-peer is the most powerful force in politics---let's see what we can do with it on Facebook!