OUGD505: Study Task 04/Vote!/Research

A YouGov survey published in May 2014 stated that less than half of eligible young people planned to vote in the general election.

How could graphic design be used to ensure that more than 41% of 18-22 year-olds actually participate in the election process?

To complete this task you will first have to research examples of elections that have successfully enticed voters (including Barack Obama's use of social media within his campaigns and the Scottish referendum's engagement of first-time voters) alongside the wants and needs of your target audience. Just by way of a comparison, three quarters of YouGov's surveyed over-60s planned to vote.

I was asssigned the task of looking at possible avenues of creative 

Scottish Independence Referendum

Guardian Article 

  
Back in September, a record number of people registered to vote in the Scottish independence referendum, with 97% of the adult population ready to take part in the vote which is astonishing. A total of 4,285,323 makes this the largest electorate the country has ever known for any election or referendum. The figure includes 118,640 voters who have registered in the august alone, as well as 789,024 postal voters. It marks an increase of over 300,000 since the last Westminster election in 2012 and includes 16- and 17-year-olds who have had the vote extended to them for the first time. 

Bite The Ballot

I have been looking at Bite The Ballot a party-neutral movement on a mission to empower young voters. They use twitter which BTB promoted a trend (#RegisterToVote) for 24 hours and alongside this, #NVRD and National Voter Registration Day organically trended for over 12 hours

Bite The Ballot’s aim is to inspire the biggest turnout of 18-24 year old voters in history (approx. 71.%) for the 2015 General Election ‘Register to vote’ reminder appearing at the top of the Facebook news feeds of 35 million UK users (which encouraged 28,000 people to register)

Verto

Verto is a voter advice tool which aims to help potential voters compare their views and values with the political parties on a variety of issues. This can be accessed on any browser on your smart phone, tablet or desktop. At the front-end, a user simply agrees or disagrees with a set of statements (for example, ‘should the UK leave the EU?’). It’s politics, made easy.

The methodology of the web application in the back-end contains weighted data on parties’ policy stances. As you agree or disagree with statements, Verto crunches this data and formulates your results. Verto then informs you of how the main parties’ values and policies align with them hoping they will be able to make an informed decision at the ballot box.

Verto has been designed and built with the overlooked demographic of young voters in mind. It translates jargon into plain English, and aims to help 16-24s re-engage with UK democracy, register to vote – and turnout.

Alternative Elections Posters 

Election campaign posters have generated some of the most defining political images of the modern age. I found these alternative election posters on the guardian, they really capture a striking insight into what younger voters think, as well as a dead-accurate view of this election and its probable outcome.