MoveOn

MoveOn has put together a pretty good video laying out the playing field for this election. Pass it around, especially to your less political friends:

I promise, last time I'll post about Britney Spears and/or the MoveOn MTV ad buy. There's no solid data about whether or not humorous and/or pop culture heavy ads are effective, but Peter Levine has some interesting thoughts on the matter and it's worth it for everyone to be on the same page wrt best practices:

I am not aware of research or public data that would allow us to compare the effectiveness of a sarcastic or silly ad versus a serious and information-rich one. Nor have I seen evaluations of games that are designed to promote voting, whether the games are silly and parodic or challenging and educational. (The campaigns may have tested games and various broadcast messages, but they never share the data from such experiments.)

My hunch is that anyone who tries a very light approach is making a mistake. Remember that less than half of the youth population will vote. Heavily represented in that group are young people who are seriously concerned about issues, from their own economic prospects to the future of the planet. Voting is not much fun, but it is rewarding if one feels one can make a real difference by casting a ballot. Potential voters are likely to be people who believe they can make a difference, or at least are open to the argument that the election is important. This is true of all citizens, but young people are especially likely to say that they need more information and explanation before they can vote. Often, in focus groups and polls, they say that the main reason they may not vote is that they feel inadequately informed to make such a serious choice. Thus I suspect that an information-rich, explanatory ad or game could be very effective. But a jokey approach is likely to make young people feel that the election is unimportant (thus lowering turnout), or may offend them by patronizing them.

This doesn't rule out some use of humor and amusement in various media. But one should always take the audience seriously.

And just in case you haven't seen this yet:

I'm happy to announce that starting next weekend, Craig Berger (aka bergerc84) will be joining us as the weekend blogger at Future Majority. Craig has consistently produced top-notch stuff on his user blog and it just seemed ridiculous that everything he wrote got promoted to the front. So welcome, Craig, to the FM team. Those interested can read a bit about Craig on the About page.

• Another FM community member, Maria Arettines, is blogging from the National Hip Hop Political Convention in Las Vegas this weekend. We'll hear more from Maria once the convention gets started.
• Meanwhile, Jeff Chang has a few thoughts about Ludacris's new song about Barack Obama, as well as the opening day of the Hip Hop Convention.
• Over at his personal blog, Bondelli has 34 +1 indispensible tips for those looking to organize and promote their work online.
• The jobless rate is at a four year high, putting a whole lot of young people looking for summer work in a pinch.
• NBS has hired Luke Russert, son of the late Tim Russert, to be one of their youth correspondents during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Luke, if you're out there, get in touch with us for the low-down on all the youth organizing at the Democratic Convention in Denver and in the general election.
• Washington Post blog The Sleuth thinks that the voter registration group HeadCount is going to have the most rocking party at the DNC.
• Advancing the Story has an interesting and useful critique of MTV's Street Team '08 citizen journalism program.
• Youth vote hero Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle pens a piece about the proxy battle for the youth vote that MoveOn and Let Freedom Ring are waging on the airwaves of MTV.
• The bloggers at Pushback continue to have an interesting discussion about the proper role of celebrities in engaging young voters.
• Fox News less successfully attempts to tackle that same topic.
• Rock the Vote notes that voting rights are human rights.
• ThePolitico tracks an emerging trend: growing interest among young people in becoming "green lobbyists."
• A young Republican pens an open letter to John McCain asking him to up his game in reaching young voters.

Kevin has written in the past about Vote Pledges - essentially signed promises to vote on election day that GOTV organizations use to make sure people to cast their ballot. Earlier today, MoveOn launched their own (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek version of a vote pledge:

"I will not get so drunk on November 3rd that I am unable to vote on November 4th."

Huh, you ask? Let's review.

Last week, a conservative group, Let Freedom Ring, took advantage of MTV's new policy of accepting political ads to launch an attack on Senator Obama. The progressive rapid response to this ad came from MoveOn, which bought time on the network this week to run a positive ad about Senator Obama.

In response to that, Michael Reagan, right-wing radio host and son of the former President, attacked young voters on CNN as apathetic drunks who don't vote because we're too hung over to get to the polls:

Redonkulous. It flies in the face of all the statistics from the last 3 election cycles. It willfully ignores the amazing turnout in this winter's primary process. And it's just plain insulting. I've got no problem Drinking Liberally, but seriously, who is out getting hammered on a Monday night? I know it's his job to talk down the youth vote and do whatever he can to depress turnout, but that doesn't make it right. I'm almost as pissed at that CNN anchor for letting something like that stand unchallenged.

Cooling down and looking at the positive in all this, great job by MoveOn for the rapid response to the Let Freedom Ring ad, and for a creative effort to prove Michael Reagan wrong about young voters.

Go sign the pledge. If MoveOn collects 50,000 signatures, they will deliver the to Michael Reagan along with a nice cold keg of beer.

First some youthy news:

• Two articles are out today on polling. The Michigan Messenger does a great job analyzing a PEW study on the demographics of cell-only and "cell-mostly" users and how pollsters are dealing with under-represtentation of these demographics in their polling. If that's a little too data-geek for you, Campus Politico has a good "polling 101" story that might be a little more your speed.
• At Tapped, Tim Fernholz questions the effectiveness of a voter registration drive launched this week by the Hip Hop Caucus.
• Matt Zeitlin at PushBack follows up on that post, noting that celebrities are not an effective way to move young voters to the polls.
• Teaming up with SPIN, CMJ, and others, Head Count has launched a 90 day voter registration challenge. They hope to register 100,000 voters by the end of the 90 days. You can watch a video of SPIN at the Warped Tour interviewing an artist about the program here.
• NDN notes Connecticut Democrats are out-registering Republicans among young voters by 4.3 - 1. That registration and turnout advantage might help Democrats defeat Republican Chris Shays in the fall. Shays is the lone Republican congressman in New England.
• South Carolina young Republicans are not feeling the love from John McCain, and Young Republicans nationally are having a tough time drawing young people to the convention.
• Meanwhile, Young Democrats are thriving in delegate-rich Florida.
• Tech President argues that 2008 is a boring year in tech/politics. While 2004 and '06 saw huge paradigm shifts in how we organize, 2008 is all about refining those practices.

Some less-youthy, but very interesting news:

• Democrats are getting ready to spend $20 million to register and GOTV latinos.
• The Nation writes about MoveOn's 10th birthday and how far the organization has come.
• A new study by the RAND Corporation tells us the obvious - to win the war on terror, we need to stop fighting the war on terror.
• Finally, the Washington Post has a front-page story basically calling "liar liar pants on fire" on the McCain campaign for their latest ad attacking Sen. Obama.

OK - it's time to nudge your friends to vote...it's time to pester them about registering as frequently and lovingly as you bug them about going with you to the movies or to a party. And fortunately, "I Vote, You Vote" agrees it should be just as easy.

A recently-launched project of the American Democracy Institute and the National Campaign for Fair Elections, this site allows you to

• send email and text encouragement to friends;
• invite them to register;
• remind them to vote;
• track whether they've taken action.

That's right: you have your "My Voters" page which tells you which of your friends have followed through (they also tell me that they are savvy enough to prevent one person from receiving redundant invitations from multiple friends...I'm ambivalent on that -- maybe it cuts down annoyance, but hearing from multiple sources is a good way to feel peer pressure).

In another gutsy move, they have a public tracker of recent actions telling you who has been sending requests. Right now, this new system doesn't have a dramatic amount of use, but it will be fun: if it goes viral, that tracker will look more like a ticker.

I say it's gutsy because it's so transparent -- we can see whether people are actually using it or not. But that transparency is good for this kind of work. We should know what tools out there are useful.

There's the CREDO tool to register to vote online (which this system is built upon; there is VotePoke from MoveOn that allows you to check on your friends; and in NY, there's Voter Search, which allows you to check your registration and get info on the next elections. And last cycle, if I recall, Craig's List had a "register to vote" link (though they don't seem to right now).

Which of these work? Which are getting traffic? Which are becoming popular? Is it because they are easy? Fun? Convincing? Partisan or objective? Youth-oriented or general?

It's great to have another tool in the market -- one that's attractive and easy, gives you reason to return again and again, and makes everyone's actions so open.

Now, let's put it to use.

• Speak of the Devil. Just a few days after I posted about MTV airing attack ads on Obama, MoveOn counters with their own positive ad on the network. It's awesome that they're countering so quickly, but truth be told, I'm not at all wowed by the ad and found it pretty easy to tune out. Judge for yourself and let me know what you think:
• Wiretap has the lowdown on a panel on the youth vote organized by the good people at S.A.V.E. Tom Friedman was on the panel, apparently making only slightly less of an ass out of himself. Dispatch Politics has more.
• The Miami Herald profiles Party Politics, a Drinking Liberally style company down in Florida that is engaging young people at nightclubs using open-bar mixers.
• The Chronicle of Higher Educaction throws some legitimate cold water on Obama mania and what it means for long-term civic engagement.
• Fox News reveals that McCain has youth chairs in 30 states. Here's my question: what the hell are they all doing?
• Just how much of your salary each year goes to Iraq? Progressive Future has a new widget that will tell you, along with what else that money could have bought.
• Non profits in New Mexico are fighting back against harsh election laws that restrict their work and discourage voter registration.
• The Hip Hop Caucus is launching a voter registration drive.
• The National Hip Hop Political Convention is this week in Las Vegas. I'm working on getting someone to live blog. Hopefully that will work out.
• Broadband penetration will hit 77% by 2012. So long digital divide . . .
• The GOP now has an Obama smear site set up to look like Facebook. It might be clever if People for the American Way hadn't already done the same thing to the GOP primary candidates almost a year ago.

Update: Go read Ari Melber's take over at The Nation.
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Yesterday I mentioned that Nas, Color of Change, and MoveOn were holding a rally outside Fox News to protest the network's racism. Fox ignored them, but Colbert made them the feature of his program last night. Here's the whole thing. Watch it.

• At Pushback, Kay Steiger identifies a huge problem with how a part of the College Cost Reduction Act is being administered. Under current administration, students who opt to go into public service won't be informed that they are eligible to receive debt relief on their loans until 10 years after they begin making payments, effectively nullifying the program and its incentive to provoke public service. The Project on Student Debt is running a petition here.
• US News has an interesting piece analyzing the wisdom of McCain and Obama's respective strategies of targeting the elderly and youth in swing states. More on this later but wanted to call it to your attention.
• I'm super skeptical of celebrity spokespeople, but Rosario Dawson (a founder of Voto Latino) did a good job today on "Morning Joe," an MSNBC program that has been about telling an accurate story about the youth vote this cycle.
• The Hip Hop Caucus reports that Nas, MoveOn, and Color of Change are outside Fox News today protesting racism in the network's coverage.
• Daniel Klein recaps our panel at Netroots Nation over at the YP4 blog.
• Some humor for you.

Three items, all having to do with online video and politics.

First, MoveOn has announced the 15 finalists in its Obama in 30 Seconds contest. You can vote here. The winner will be aired on national television. This one is my favorite:

Second, I've just found out through the blog grapevine that Joe Felice, one of my old MFA colleagues, has an awesome YouTube Show in which he covers politics, among other things. It's amazing.

Joe is currently involved in an online video contest the prize of which is a free ride to the Democratic Convention. He's been selected as a finalist in the Project Breakout Political Pundit competition and here is his final submission:

Joe is smart as a whip and just as witty. His coverage of the convention will be top notch. He deserves to be there. Go vote for him.

In the meantime, I'll be adding Joe's show to the Breaking Video sidebar. Watch for that crazy afro he's got going.

Finally, Google and YouTube have announced a partnership to produce a political forum in New Orleans during the general election. Here's hoping they adopt something like the MTV/MySpace Dialogue format.

Here's the announcement: