What are you doing tomorrow?

Posted November 6th, 2006 at 10:45 am by Meg Garlinghouse, Yahoo! for Good

 3 Comments / Filed in: Yahoo! For Good

Back in April, I got a call from the elections director at the League of Women Voters, the nonpartisan group that encourages informed and active civic participation. (And it’s not just for women, btw.) She told me that with the growing number of young first-time voters basically living online, there was a real need for an all-you-can-eat voter information guide on the Internet. They planned to build it, but how could they reach critical mass to turn those newbie voters onto it?

Motivating and educating voters is one of my passions. Prior to the 2004 presidential election, the Yahoo! for Good team partnered with Norman Lear’s nonpartisan Declare Yourself to register more then 1 million new young voters. Supporting the League of Women Voters and their request was a no-brainer for the critical upcoming mid-term elections.

So Yahoo! for Good mobilized to pull together resources from across our network to support the launch of Vote411.org. The site is designed to arm voters with everything from candidate positions to ID requirements for voting in each state to rules for absentee and overseas voters. Possibly the coolest feature is a polling locator tool for all 50 states — the first national, centralized effort to address what league members report is the most confusing part about voting. You’ve been there, right? It’s the first Tuesday morning of November and you have no idea where to go to pull that lever (or poke that chad). Some states had web sites, others had nothing or outdated information. Voters will never wander aimlessly again.

Yahoo! is hosting the site to support traffic from millions of voters, linking to it from our front page and our Yahoo! News Full Coverage elections page, integrating Yahoo! Maps with polling information for some states, and providing the League with pro bono Yahoo! Search Marketing keyword matches.

We’ve done our part, now go do yours. Vote tomorrow!

Meg Garlinghouse
Director, Yahoo! for Good

Photos from hey-helen and snowdeal

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3 Comments Add your own

Buck Scholderer | November 7th, 2006 at 8:33 am

Why, on election day, has Yahoo seen fit to blank out Ann Coulter? I have her columns and several others on my home page and note this morning that, not only are the most recent 3 not listed, but her “url link” is non-existant.
Since her website (your source each week) is still operational, I can only assume that Yahoo is playing politics - or little kids games - same thing!

Pat Scholderer | November 7th, 2006 at 8:39 am

Hi Yahoo.

For the first time, in a very long time, I am DISAPOINTED & VERY UPSET that SOME of “My Yahoo” content is blanked out today—Election Day.
Sure smacks of editorial bias!

What, you may ask? Only one columnist and one News Network.

Which? The link to Ann Coulter’s column not only does not list her most recent columns (as it did yesterday), but the Link to it’s source is NON-ACTIVE today. HUH!

Looks like the staff at YAHOO is POLITICING TO ME! I like to read both sides when it comes to VOTING. NOT JUST ONE VIEW! Tacky, Tacky and not so SUTTLE, yahoo.

Disappointed in you taking any position aside from “get out and vote your conscience.”

Pat Scholderer
Antioch, CA
Long time subscriber and user of your many services.

Nicki Dugan | November 7th, 2006 at 2:40 pm

Pat & Buck:

Our My Yahoo! team suggest that you click on the “edit” button on the bar for Ann Coulter’s RSS feed and select “Edit Content.” From there, go to the pulldown menu for the time period and select “any date.” It’s likely that your current display option is preventing you free seeing Ann’s posts since her last article was published a week ago. The default setting is three days.

Hope that helps!