In 2016, just 46.1 percent of the country’s 18-29-year-old voters cast a ballot. To encourage a higher voter turnout among young adults, ViacomCBS and the Ad Council have launched a digital campaign called Vote For Your Life. The initiative aims to encourage mass registration and early voting among Gen Z and millennials, who comprise 10 percent and 27 percent of eligible US voters, respectively.
With voter registration down by as much as 70 percent in some states, MTV will pay for the cost of printing and mailing ballot applications for US voters via the VoteForYourLife.com through October 6. The online hub, powered by BallotReady and TurboVote, also lets users check their registration status, request their ballot early, preview candidates up for election in their district and access resources to inform their vote.
The Vote For Your Life campaign includes two short video spots, one that links the significance of voting with the issues that young black and Latino voters care about, and another that encourages younger audiences to vote for access to better mental health. The spots are available in English and Spanish.
The campaign is an extension of MTV’s Vote Early Day, a new holiday slated for October 24 that aims to make early voting options more accessible. Among the initiative’s 1,300 partners are Twitter, Univision, USA Today, Snapchat, REI, Ben & Jerry’s, PayPal, BuzzFeed and Reddit.
Other voter turnout campaigns across ViacomCBS properties include BET’s #ReclaimYourVote campaign which included National Black Voter Day on September 18, a joint grassroots effort with the National Urban League to educate and mobilize black voters; MTV’s +1thevote, a year-long campaign focused on making voting easier and more social in light of over 4 million people turning 18 before the election; and Power the Polls, an initiative from MTV and Comedy Central to recruit the next generation of poll workers, which recently amassed 425,000 signups.
