NAACP Launches Online Voter Registration Tool
WASHINGTON - The NAACP has launched Upload 2 Uplift, an online voter 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. This is the second election cycle that the NAACP has used Upload 2 Uplift. In 2008 more than XXX people registered using the tool, which includes a mobile messaging feature to remind registered voters to go to the polls on Election Day. “Voter registration has been a crucial NAACP priority throughout our history,” 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. “ 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. Upload 2 Uplift includes a voter registration widget that allows community partners, bloggers and anyone with a website to easily add the technology to their sites using a simple embed code available on the NAACP web page. “The intent is to make this technology available as widely as possible, in order to reach the millions of remaining unregistered voters, and to encourage greater turnout at the polls,” said Kirk Clay, Sr., NAACP Director of Civic Engagement. 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.
