Many mainstream media sources offer free voter guides containing basic information and policy statements of candidates. NBC4 is taking things a step further by offering to work with candidates to create an “interactive sample ballot” and other services. But there’s a catch: you have to pay to play!
Yesterday, NBC4 sent the following email to local area candidates.From: eVoter Guide [support@evoter.com]
When candidates log in to evoter’s website, they see this fee schedule to access its services.
Subject: Post Your Profile in the NBC 4 Washington Online Voter Guide
To: “Candidate”
Date: Thursday, August 5, 2010, 10:06 AM
Post Your Profile Now in the eVoter / NBC Washington Online Voter Guide eVoter.com/Signup
eVoter.com has partnered with NBC 4 Washington to provide voters in Maryland with comprehensive online voter information. Voters can find their interactive sample ballot by visiting NBC Washington’s web site and entering their address in an eVoter ballot / polling place search box.
NBC 4 Washington will begin promoting service on their evening newscasts. And as Election Day approaches, on-air promotion will become more frequent and prominent. Tens of thousands of motivated Maryland voters will be visiting eVoter to find election information and to view an interactive sample ballot where they can view candidate profiles and organization endorsements.
You can leverage this partnership and reach these motivated voters with your message for literally pennies per voter by positing your profile on eVoter. It only takes a few minutes. Click here to sign up: eVoter.com/Signup; Or call our customer service toll-free at (866) 976 0555 if you have any questions.
Interactive Sample Ballots...
eVoter's interactive sample ballots help voters make decisions quickly and easily:
Sample ballots are customized to the voter’s address, showing every race from the top of the ballot to the bottom, including propositions, bonds, etc.
eVoter shows voters their polling place on a map
Voters can make selections on their interactive sample ballot and then print them - providing a ready voting aid
Organizations and media partners with eVoter profiles can also show their endorsements right on the sample ballot - invaluable to voters and candidates alike
Detailed Candidate Profiles...
And for those candidates with eVoter.com profiles, the benefits are tremendous. Voters can link directly from their sample ballots to detailed candidate profiles including:
Candidate photos
Personal statements
Endorsements
Links to media articles
Videos
Links to official candidate websites
Active Candidate Support...
From an eVoter.com candidate profile, voters can take the next step and actively support candidates by:
Make contributions (via eVoter’s contribution processing or by linking directly to a candidate’s processor)
Contact candidates with questions
Offer support to candidates (from requesting lawn signs to stuffing envelopes)
And Many More Features...
eVoter.com goes beyond offering just sample ballots, providing motivated voters with everything they need to prepare on election day:
State election calendars
Voter registration applications
Absentee ballot applications
Polling place information
Toll-Free eVoter support
Post Your Profile Now in the eVoter / NBC Washington Online Voter Guide eVoter.com/Signup
NBC4 is the #1 television station in Washington, D.C. The station is owned and operated by NBC Universal (a division of GE), and is a long-standing leader in every aspect of broadcasting and community service. NBC4 sponsors more than 30 local events each year, and produces the annual NBC4 Health & Fitness Expo, the largest free consumer health event in the country. The station is also known for its Safe & Secure Community Shreds, and the annual Camp 4 Kids campaign. The NEWS4 team produces 40 hours of news each week, and is Washington’s most watched news.
“We were pleased to be able to provide our website users an advance look at their ballot and the location of their polling places. Many of our viewers took advantage of eVoter in the days leading up to the election.”
NBC Chicago
“You can type in any address at eVoter Minnesota to generate a sample ballot listing all the races and candidates in your area. It also gives you a map showing your polling place... eVoter's interface is slick and very easy to use...”
Minnesota Today - Minn. Public Radio
“Voters here must put extra effort into making their choices, particularly on down-ticket races... You can read extensive information on all races and view a sample ballot for your precinct by visiting evoter.com.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch - STL Today
“With eVoter, Sun-Times Media had the only newspaper websites in Illinois that gave their readers complete ballot information, down to the smallest office and local referenda, and complete polling place information throughout the state.”
Chicago Sun Times
“Our goal is to provide comprehensive and useful election information for voters in our area.. eVoter provides that coverage by listing all the candidates, propositions and polling places in an easy to access format across the San Diego area and the rest of the state.”
NBC San Diego
Contact us: support@eVoter.com
Our MAILING ADDRESS is:
Political Technologies LLC
Attn: (please put department)
2028 Harrison St
Suite 108
Hollywood, FL 33020
Call us TOLL FREE: (866) 976-0555
Copyright (C) 2010 Political Technologies All rights reserved. “eVoter”, the “eVoter logo”, and “Interactive Politics” are trademarks of Political Technologies LLC. All other trademarks and marks are the properties of their respective owners. Candidate profiles and content are paid advertisements by the candidate’s campaign committee. Political Technologies LLC. is not responsible for candidate content.
So if you want to be in the Post’s or the Gazette’s voter guides, just send in your info and you’re done. But if you want to be in NBC4’s voter guide and reach “tens of thousands of motivated Maryland voters” who will make instantaneous contributions and grab yard signs, you have to PAY.
Now newspapers have offered free voter guides for years. That’s a public service with the beneficial side effect of perhaps buttressing circulation. And newspapers and other publications can sell ads to candidates just as they sell them to anyone else. That’s fine and good. But NBC4 is essentially offering outsourced campaign services.
Is that really a line of business that’s appropriate for an objective news organization?
Friday, August 06, 2010
NBC4 Offers Pay-to-Play for Candidates
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2 comments:
Adam:
Are you serious? The "pay" being sought here for the County Council at-large race, for example, is $100. Period. Candidates are raising in the six figures, and you're exercised about a $100 fee to essentially provide some basic content and links from the Channel 4 voter site to candidates' websites? Come on.
Any candidate that can't afford $100 for this service (which, at first blush, appears to be completely legal, by the way) ought not be running for office.
I can't think of a cheaper way to reach voters, either. I don't know what the cost per voter numbers are this year for outreach, but if 100 MoCo voters go to Channel 4's site, that's $1 per person for each County Council AL candidate. If it's 1,000 voters, that's $0.10 per person. If it's 10,000 voters, that's $0.01 each, yes, a penny a voter.
And these are for voters that are interested -- anyone going to the site is by definition a likely voter, because they're seeking out the information.
If NBC was charging $1,000 per candidate, it would be a legitimate complaint to say that some could afford it and some couldn't, but $100 is ridiculously affordable.
I think you're suffering from a slow news day, Adam. Hasn't Saqib posted something inflammatory on his Facebook page today?
Jonathan Shurberg
Hi – I’m the CEO of eVoter.com and I wanted to to clarify some of the misconceptions posted in this blog.
We are the website powering NBC 4’s online voter guide. Visitors there are directed to a co-branded site where every candidate/office and ballot measure is listed and any residential address pulls a complete interactive ballot with polling places (this is regardless of whether a candidate pays). The payment is to have a profile that is visible not just to NBC 4 visitors, but to anyone who uses eVoter. In addition, organization can list their endorsements for free – this is visible on the ballot by toggling the “view endorsements” on the ballot.
There is no other site that provides the platform that we do, but this depth and functionality costs money. eVoter is a very feature-rich site. Also, we spend money on marketing, primarily on search, to drive voters to our site. The feedback we get from voters is that it’s very cool and addresses their needs. In the states where we’ve launched (IL, CA, AND MN) and been through a primary, we’ve gotten between 5-8% of primary voters – and our average page views are over 5 pages per visit.
To say that the Post and the Gazette have “free voter guides” is to compare apples and oranges. First, we provide candidates with a dynamic mini-website (with its own url) that they control and can update and customize. We are not simply posting a static page (I don’t know what the Gazette is actually doing, but right now its simply a list of candidates, with no district search by address). Finally, not only can voters print out a personalized sample ballot after they’ve made their choices, but it has a toll free customer service number to help with any problems!
But our concept is really much more. Many voters don’t focus on downballot races. Voters often visit eVoter just to find their polling place (we get 70% of our traffic on the last three days, including election day) – so we may be their very last stop before they go to the polls. They see a complete ballot that has downballot races, which maybe they didn’t even know about. How many campaigns spend big money on websites, etc. that no one will ever see because no one is focused on those races?
We are totally unbiased. Every candidate can post a profile for a set price per office. Any organization can list endorsements for free - and we’ll provide these organizations with free tools and search widgets that they can use to communicate their endorsements to their members for free.
We’ve been around longest in Illinois (they had the first primary) and if you visit our Illinois site, you will see that it is heavily populated with candidates and organizations from the Sierra Club to Right to Life to Planned Parenthood (we also have Tea Parties and Unions). Perhaps the best testimony is the fact that both the IL Republican Party (http://www.weareillinois.org/learn/candidates.aspx) and the IL Democratic Party (http://www.ildems.com/Candidates.htm - click on the second “here”) link to us as their candidate finders.
We offer voters an unbiased platform to find information in one place and we offer candidates and organizations the opportunity to reach those voters. We charge candidates a reasonable price – far less than they spend per voter using any other media. We work to attract voters through a variety of methods (including our partnership with NBC). What you posted on your site is an e-mail that we send out to candidates to let them know that this opportunity exists. So far in Maryland, we’ve had a pretty good response because candidates want to get their message out to voters – I think once they actually get on there, they are pleasantly surprised just how sophisticated the profile and tools are.
Most importantly, we think that we will provide Maryland’s (and the District’s) voters a good service by providing a website that is more highly functional and technologically sophisticated than any voter guide out there. I’m not quite sure what’s wrong with that.
Adam Kravitz
(866) 976-0555
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