Back in the day, I didn’t need the help of MTV or the American Library Association (ALA) to convince me to vote. Of course this was at a time when I Can’t Drive 55 had more in common with the music channel than a twenty-something slacker driving the Road Rules van. Regardless, I support any non-partisan voter registration effort. The campaigns of MTV and ALA are hardly non-partisan.

Your Vote Matters is the product of ALA’s partnership with Working Assets, the credit card and long distance company with a conscience and the marketing to prove it. Here’s the deal according to ALA:

The Your Vote Matters site was created and customized by Working Assets for participating non-partisan (emphasis mine), non-profit organizations. When citizens register to vote through this Web site, they help raise funds for library advocacy thanks to a generous grant from Working Assets.

Generous?? I think paltry a better adjective to describe a $3500 grant from a multi-million dollar company to a national library organization. ($1000 to the library that registers the most voters, with $500 grants awarded to the first five libraries that register five hundred voters.) Generous may be better used to describe ALA’s placement of a linkable Working Assets logo conspicuously placed at the top of the voter registration page. A $3500 marketing coup at the expense of ALA? Absolutely not. There's nothing secret about the progressive agenda of Working Assets, which leaves no other explanation than ALA's willingness to serve as a customer conduit while helping plant the seed of liberal indoctrination. All under the pretense of civic duty.

From Working Assets Mission, Donations and Activism:

Since 1985, Working Assets has generated $40 million for progressive nonprofits, including Greenpeace, Oxfam America, Rainforest Action Network, Human Rights Watch, Planned Parenthood, Stand for Children and Doctors Without Borders, among many others.

Each year Working Assets supports nonprofit groups in five categories: Economic & Social Justice, Environment, Civil Rights, Peace & International Freedom and Education & Freedom of Expression. In 2003 alone, Working Assets raised over $3 million in donations for 50 groups such as ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Earth Island Institute, People for the American Way and Center for Economic Justice.

Working Assets is also the company that gave away 10,000 prepaid calling cards in 1995 to anyone interested in taking the time to reach out and touch someone capable of derailing Newt Gingrich. Like any good capitalist, I applaud Working Assets cunning to find a niche to sell their services. But let’s not confuse clever marketing with social justice. Take the Jim Crow era photo that just happens to be on the same page for long distance, wireless and credit card applications when linking from Your Vote Matters. One almost feels guilty not applying for that long distance program with the $5.95 monthly fee.

I wonder if those folks holding hands 40 years ago would have any thoughts about having their struggle used as part of a marketing campaign to undercut the monthly fees of Sprint and AT&T?

But the heart tugging doesn’t stop there. To “sweeten” the deal, all newly franchised ALA guests that apply for the long distance promotion will receive a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. A total of twelve recombinant bovine growth hormone free pints for a year! (rBGH is perfectly safe) Yes this is Ben and Jerry, darlings of the environmental crowd, who have long since sold out to chemical giant Unilever ostensibly to focus their efforts on another green issue, money.

Coincidentally Unilever, like Working Assets, has an interest in Greenpeace, namely with refuting their allegations of mercury dumping in the soap factory area of Kodaikanal India. Get a great long distance deal and help pollute a third world country?

Another example that belies ALA’s self confessed non-partisanship with Your Vote Matters is their relationship with People for the American Way (PFAW). Aside from having absolutely nothing to do with voter registration, the Your Vote Matters page devotes as much space to soliciting volunteers for PFAW’s “election protection” as it does registering voting newbies. One is hardly surprised when seeing the same Jim Crow era photo from the long distance application page, now flanked with a snapshot of Gore malcontents in Florida on the Election Protection page. The PFAW call to action reads:

They fought. Now it’s your turn.

In the last presidential election, millions of votes were never counted. Voters in minority communities were disproportionately disenfranchised through illegal disqualification, intimidation and faulty voting machines. The nonpartisan Election Protection coalition needs you to stand up and defend your voting rights on November 2.

No mention of rampant voter fraud in St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago and Los Angeles where in some Democrat precincts 125% of registered voters cast ballots in 2000. Ne’er a reference to Democrat lawyer types likes Mark Herron, who made a nice living disenfranchising American servicemen and women whose ballots lacked a postmark. (Although Federal law makes no requirement). No praises sung for the Equal Protection of Voting Rights Act of 2001, which has the audacity to legally mandate a form of personal identification before voting. Zilch.

I wonder if a library card would do?

But this is the same PFAW that uses its annual report “Attacks on the Freedom to Learn” (Available for $14.95, PFAW members $12.95), to routinely distort censorship issues. Usually at the expense of conservatives and Christian fundamentalists. Who could expect ALA to resist?

In the 1994-1995 school year, according to PFAW's 1995 report, the two most frequently challenged books in U.S. schools were Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which include tales like "Wonderful Sausage," about a butcher who gets such culinary raves for his ground-up wife that he embarks on a town-wide sausage-making rampage, collecting children and, for good measure, "their kittens and puppies." But the report's (Attacks on the Freedom to Learn) 30-page introduction, which winds up being the main source for news stories, makes no mention of Schwartz's books. Meanwhile, Of Mice and Men and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings get four mentions each. It's a classic bait-and-switch. When you think of censorship, you don't imagine a university professor complaining that his first-grader is too young to read stories about murder and dismemberment.

(Washington Monthly, January/February 1997)

If still unconvinced, then consider the PFAW home page. Any non-partisan credulity is quickly dashed with PFAW’s hysterical “Flash the Court” contest. My money is on Scalia’s “Wack a Liberal” gavel.

Listen up ALA. If voter registration is truly your goal, stop this disingenuous business, yes business, as a "feel good" huckster. Your scheme here is more about opportunism than democracy. Registering people to vote has nothing to do with the efforts of Working Assets or People for the American Way and their references should be removed from Your Vote Matters. Any notion to the contrary should be saved for the frogs and the folks at Working Assets. They're greener.