tuba city

Vote Or Not = 9.8

OK, so I am still not really in a blogging mood these days....but I'm willing to participate in a shameless but pretty brilliant viral marketing contest when I see one. The Hot or Not guys started a "Vote or Not" contest to encourage people to vote....and here's the link where you can enter to win $100,000 as long as you happen to be registered to vote on November 2nd. The winner of a drawing gets $100K and the person that referred the winner (i.e., me if you win after entering through the above link) gets another $100K. I'm sure the Founding Fathers would be horrified at the idea of dangling greenbacks in front of the citizenry in order to inspire voting.....or who knows, maybe they would see it as a necessary incentive given low voter participation rates....'cause their preference for representative/indirect democracy wasn't exactly based on supreme confidence in the decision-making powers of the average citizen.

At any rate, it's definitely arguable that a higher turnout of completely uninformed voters does not do the country any good. But I think there are plenty of adequately informed voters who don't know all the details about registration deadlines and address-changing requirements and the like....and maybe just need a small poke from the cattle prod in order to get registered in advance. So I support this contest as a potentially effective tool for encouraging people to vote. And I would even hazard a completely speculative guess that younger, Internet-surfing folks in need of $100K are probably going to trend a little bit more towards Kerry in this election. So I pass along my Vote Or Not link in hopes that it encourages at least one extra person to register to vote. The North Carolina registration deadline is October 8th (almost exactly a month away), by the way.

So click here and be a greedy patriot! This might be the most ingenious viral marketing scheme since....Gmail invites! Speaking of which, I'll throw in one of those if you're among the first 5 Gmail-wanting folks to sign up through my link.

Somehow these sorts of things always remind me of the recursive definition of recursion. Which reminds me that I have some programming to get back to...