PSAs

Our good friends over at 18 in 08 are bringing on the hawt PSA action

Two new ad/PSA campaigns targeting youth launched today.

As part of their transition from Registration to GOTV, Rock the Vote is putting this PSA on the air in local markets in select Battleground states (I'm trying to find out which ones).

Rock the Vote is also announced the launch of two new sites today: an Election Center featuring information about issues, voting rights and voter protection, and a voter pledge to cast a ballot on election day. The Election Center is linked up with numerous partners, including Election Protection, Project Vote Smart, and Bother Voting, the snarky eCard political site. The voter pledge is hooked into Rock the Vote's text messaging and field programs.

MoveOn also launched a media campaign - this one online only- as part of their "Parntership for a McCain-free White House." The video features a number of actors from Gossip Girl, and, as Sam Stein notes at Huffington Post, is one of a series of new projects launched recently - by comedians, activists, and the Obama campaign - to ask that young voters talk to their parents about the Obama/Biden ticket.

Update: Peter Koechley at MoveOn writes in to say that the video will be airing on TV in Nevada and North Carolina:

The ad, released by MoveOn.org Political Action, will air nationally during Gossip Girl as well as on MTV and Comedy Central in university towns in North Carolina and Nevada.

I have to confess, I didn't think much of Declare Yourself in 2004. They barely registered on the radar among youth organizations that year, and I found their Declaration of Independence Tour to be exceedingly lame. Sure, they get a lot of folks registered to vote, but all the registration in the world between 1993 and 2003 didn't get more young people voting. I tend to think that you need to give people a reason to vote. Sometimes the political environment (read: Bush, Iraq, Katrina) can provide that reason, and sometimes partisan messages can help provide that.

I also usually dislike PSAs, which tend to try way too hard to be cool and just end up being uninspiring. Most of the time they end up making political participation seem even less cool or relevant.

But these new ads done by Declare Yourself and the folks behind Reno 911 are pretty damn good, and they just might make me change my mind about Declare Yourself. They certainly make me want to get my ass to the ballot box.

I guess I'll have to keep a close eye on what Declare Yourself does this year. Particularly with their voter registration partnership with MySpace (There will be some interesting comparisons to be made in December 2008 between the Rock the Vote voter registration widget and the MySpace/Declare Yourself partnership.

More videos after the jump.