Don't Vote

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In the latest batch of Get Out The Vote ads, celebrities are being used to appeal to younger, unregistered voters throughout the country. The video entitled “Don’t Vote” involves 30 celebrities uses reverse psychology to attempt to convince young adults not to vote since their votes “don’t matter.” Throughout the close to five minute video these stars explain that there is no need to vote, who cares, Jonah Hill says, that the economy is doing terribly because “I got so much money." Each celebrity jokes in their own right about the problems within our country, touching on everything from the war on drugs to abortion rights. In the end, these celebrities prove that these issues are real and do effect young adults, therefore young adults must use their voices and vote in the upcoming election.

Through the use of reverse psychology, this video appeals to college students and young adults by focusing on issues that are important to this specific age group. The video touches on issues with drugs, literacy, and how truly important this election is for this generation specifically. It can be noted that this video makes greater attempts than past Get Out The Vote ads to appeal to minorities. Within this video, seven of the thirty stars are from a minority race, either African American or Hispanic. There is targeted language throughout the video, mentioning welfare, minimum wage, education and civil rights. In fact, the mention of the war on drugs as well as the importance of education is mentioned by a Puerto Rican, Benicio Del Toro. This shows the targeted nature of the video since it is a clear trend that these issues are very important to the Hispanic population. Forest Whitaker mentions the issues of welfare, minimum wage. Once again these are targeted issues that are important to the African American community. It is clear that these are hot topics for minority groups and therefore having a minority celebrity mention them will encourage these groups to register and vote in this election.

Produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company, this public service announcement was not as concerned about the cost effectiveness but rather about getting the word about registration deadlines out to young adults. Unlike other videos that simply focus on getting people out to vote, this video mentions registration, in a humorous manner, stressing the impending deadlines. Similar to the experiment done by Votes for Students in 2002, it is unclear how many of the e-mails and messages regarding this video went unopened (Green and Gerber, 2004). The entire effort of the video is to get each viewer to send it to five friends who will then send it to five more friends, creating a web of viewers. By having friends send it to each other, it is more likely for people to open and watch the video, hopefully then forwarding it along to their friends. The true question here is how many young adults who watched the video followed the link and registered to vote. It is possible that the numbers will never be known, but it is clear that this video went to great lengths to emphasize the importance of voting.

Targeting young adults through the Internet proves to be a strong Get Out the Vote campaign since so many teens and twenty year olds spend so much time on the computer. Hopefully, this ad’s reverse psychology will motivate many young adults to register and vote in the upcoming election since it is clear that their opinions do matter.