Saturday, November 11, 2006

Kilroy Advertising to Provisional Voters

I was in Columbus today for work. Coming out of town I heard an ad on the Buckeyes radio station. It starts with the disclosure, "I'm Mary Jo Kilroy and I approved this message." Then an announcer tells voters who cast provisional ballots to call a number to make sure your ballot is handled fairly. The announcer emphasizes that the race in the 15th Congressional District between Mary Jo Kilroy and Deborah Pryce is not resolved. There may be more but I was driving, so my notetaking ability was limited.

I heard from a colleague at the meeting that many of the provisionals turn out to be university students who got bounced to provisional land because -- duh -- their voter reg address doesn't match their drivers license. Isn't it great that we're discouraging civic engagement among our young people with this solution-without-a-problem voter ID law?

Anyway, sports radio isn't necessarily the strongest D demographic, but given that OSU students are heavily represented among the provisionals, the ad buy makes good sense. Best of luck with it.

1 comments:

Scott Piepho said...

Agreed that's how it should have worked. One of the many problems with the Voter ID law is that when laws are complicated -- and this one is labyrinthine -- polling staff often don't understand and missapply it or use the complexity to substitute their own judgement. It sounds like that's what happened in Columbus and, from what I hear, Athens as well.