Recently, I stumbled upon the new “Declare Yourself” Public Service Announcements online. It showcases various celebrities with their mouths sewn shut using various objects. Jessica Alba’s bondage inspired PSA attracts youth by its striking visual metaphor. The intentions of Declare Yourself, with the slogan “Only You Can Silence Yourself” are to attract young voters to register for the upcoming American Presidential Election. The campaign is savvy, attracting young voters using celebrity appeal, sophisticated multimedia and technology to reach American Youth. The website describes the campaign as being a “national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign to empower and encourage every eligible 18-year-old in America to register and vote in the presidential primaries and 2008 presidential election. Using the power of strategic media partnerships, celebrity spokespeople, the sports arena, and most importantly, mobile and Internet technology, Declare Yourself’s campaign blankets the landscape of popular culture, as well as universities and high schools, with a simple, clear message: REGISTER and VOTE”. Their strategy seems to have come with some success, so far the young voter registration after the primaries has doubled since the 2000 and 2004 campaigns. Using web based networking sites like MySpace and Yahoo among others this year the campaign seems to be reaching out to a broader range of youth in the United States.

Canada is also preparing for an upcoming election in October. Already overshadowed by the intense publicity surrounded by the American Presidential Election, the Canadian Election seems to be lacking in any sort of media pizazz.  Is this the Canadian way or has the Canadian election come at a time when there is so much going on in the world that our small country has gone unnoticed? The youth vote in Canada, or the lack of youth participation is an issue which should concern Canadians as much as it does our neighbours to the south. In the 2004 election, the number of young voters had risen because of what Elections Canada called a “rigorous media campaign targeted at youth”. The youth vote campaign has been notably absent in the 2008 election campaign.

The first thing I did was a search online to find out what information is out there targeting Canadian youth to vote. Elections Canada has a Young Voters section on their website, complete with games, information about the elections process and links to non-partisan organizations that are working towards attracting youth voters. However, once you go into these links, you realize there is nothing really attractive to youth. Its not even a question of style and pizazz over substance because the websites and ad campaigns I’ve seen regarding the Canadian Election really don’t have either. From what I can see, some of the information on the Young Voters website hasn’t been updated since 2004, little is said about the importance of voting for youth, and their campaign slogan “Vote, shape your world” is nothing inspiring or motivational.

Other organizations I found were also disappointing, Student Vote.ca was geared towards elementary school students. The Democracy Project had a Youth Text campaign in which youth can text political parties with their comments and opinions, but little was said about the effectiveness of the campaign in getting youth to register to vote. In a country where just over 60% of the eligible population voted in the 2006 election and new voter registration was at an all time low, why isn’t there more media coverage about this issue? Where are the Canadian celebrities and their Public Service Announcements about youth voter registration? It’s not as if there is no research being done with youth, I found reports created by the Canadian Policy Research Networks in which youth were put together in roundtable dialogues about citizen engagement but there were no follow up actions.

Declare Yourself was started by Norman Lear a philanthropist in 2003 as “the culmination of the Declaration of Independence (DOI) Road Trip, a nationwide multimedia exhibit and tour of an original copy of the Declaration of Independence”. It has since grown into a voter outreach campaign that registered over a million young voters between the age of 18 and 29 in the 2004 and 2006 campaigns. The youth, the policy makers, the philanthropists and the celebrities in Canada should stop silencing themselves and get out there and do something about the state of voter apathy in Canada.