Comcast Leads Multicultural Voter Registration Effort
By Laura Martinez -- Multichannel News, 12/19/2007 3:51:00 AM
Ugly Betty stars Ana Ortiz and Tony Plana, along with Mexican-American comedian George Lopez are among a group of Hispanic entertainers starring in Our Time to Vote, a $5 million national multicultural voter education and registration campaign launched by the cable industry.
The effort, led by Comcast and supported by Time Warner, Cox Communications, and Bright House Networks, features a series of PSAs that began airing on Dec. 15. Additional spots will run from Sep.1 through Nov. 3, 2008 leading up to the general election.
While the current Hispanic-targeted PSAs are in English, Comcast will soon launch a similar series of spots in Spanish language. “We are combining the power of celebrities with the power of cable to get the word out,” said Susan Gonzales, Comcast’s corporate senior director of federal and external affairs and VP of the Comcast Foundation.
Gonzales, based in Washington D.C., said the current effort was a result of a series of conversations and meeting she had with Hispanic political leaders in the nation’s capital.
Our Time to Vote, said Gonzales, is the first-ever voter registration outreach by Comcast and it comes to complement similar ongoing efforts, such as the one launched this year by Univision Communications in conjunction with the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
“Between Univision’s effort and the cable’s effort, we are potentially reaching all Latinos,” said Gonzales. “You have the Spanish speakers and then you have the English-dominant Latinos who might be watching English-language cable”.
In addition to the PSAs, the Comcast Foundation has awarded a series of grants to five organizations, three of which are Hispanic: the Hispanic Federation; the League of United Latin American Citizens and NALEO.
The year-long, non partisan campaign also targets African-Americans and Asian-Americans as part of the industry’s goal to help educate voters and get them to register to vote.
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