NAACP Launches online voter registration

(Washington, DC)—The NAACP announced today the “Let’s Do It Again 2010” voter empowerment and registration campaign.  This cutting edge campaign will add the “Upload 2 Uplift” tool that uses social media technology to allow people to register to vote online and to upload the Email addresses of family and friends who are not yet registered to its full voter empowerment campaign.

“Voter empowerment and registration has been a crucial NAACP priority throughout our history.  Upload to Uplift was so successful in 2008, and this year we will be using it in earnest this year to ensure that the first time voters in 2008 become repeat voters in 2010,” said NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. “The technology allows us to use viral marketing to build on our time-tested practices like phone banking and door-to-door canvassing.  The NAACP will be aggressively pursuing voter registration in our lead up to the 10-2-10 One Nation Working Together Rally to ensure that the thousands marching on the mall will march to the voting booths on 11-2-10 and continue the progress this country has made since the Presidential Election of 2008.”
This is the second election cycle that the NAACP has used Upload 2 Uplift. In 2008 more than 23,000 people registered using the tool. This new tool includes a mobile messaging feature to remind registered voters to go to the polls on Election Day.
According to the United States Census Bureau, only sixty-nine percent of African Americans are registered, compared to seventy-five percent of non-Hispanic whites, a disparity that Jealous finds unacceptable. “Our goal is to register every last voter, to verify every last voter, to mobilize every last voter, and to protect the rights of every last voter by ensuring that every last vote is counted,” said Jealous.
“The intent of this new initiative is to reach the millions of remaining unregistered voters, to encourage greater turnout at the polls and to protect those votes by making sure they are counted” said Hilary O. Shelton, Director of the NAACP Washington Bureau and Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy.  “In 2008 the forces of progress overwhelmingly turned out and voted. This November 2010 we are facing a critical point for our future—to continue changing this country for the better or to roll the clock back.  The NAACP will do everything within our non-partisan power to ensure that voters across our country are informed, empowered and go to the polls to vote to America moving forward,” added Shelton.
Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.