Valley signs promote simple message: VOTE
You may have driven past the bright white signs calling for you to “VOTE” on Nov. 6.
The billboards from Vote.org have sprouted up all over the Phoenix area in the lead-up to Election Day.
The billboards are sparse, telling people simply to vote and including the election date in English and Spanish.
The group behind the billboards, Vote.org, is a nonpartisan non-profit. In a statement, Vote.org said it wants to increase voter turnout and expand the voting population to better reflect the larger population.
Vote.org said it specifically wants to reach people of color, people who voted for the first time in 2016 and young people.
The group’s website provides inforof mation on registering to vote, where to vote early, how to get early ballots, where polling places are and more. The site includes quotes from Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Republican President Ronald Reagan.
Vote.org paid for 255 billboards and bus stop bench ads in Phoenix and Tucson.
Nationwide, the group bought more than 2,500 billboards in nine states, including Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
The group estimated its billboards and other advertising across the country, which include messages wrapped around or placed on buses, will be viewed more than 1 billion times this election.
Many campaigns focus their advertising dollars on television; Arizona recently topped the nation for the number political ads on TV this election season. But Vote.org chose billboards and other large-scale public advertising partly because of the lower percentage of young people who watch broadcast television.
Besides the billboards, Vote.org will run more than 1,200 full-page ads in college newspapers, which it expects will reach 14.5 million students, faculty and staff.
The group will send text messages to 11 million people with election information.
Vote.org also has partnered with Lyft to provide discount codes for rides to the polls and with the private social network Nextdoor to let voters find polling places.
Vote.org campaigned earlier this year to get companies to give voters at least two hours of paid time off on Election Day.