Most of the year, they are battling it out for traffic gains, but over the next month, a group of roughly 60 media sites are partnering with Rock the Vote to register voters ahead of the presidential election.
The sites, which are primarily branded as women’s or fashion-centric media titles, are working together to register voters, starting Tuesday. The campaign, which is known as #OurVoteCounts, is meant to “ensure that more women participate” in the presidential election. According to a spokeswoman for the initiative, the “nonpartisan” effort will reach an audience of more than 67 million women across varied ages, races, geographic locations and viewpoints.
The initiative is not unlike that of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, which is working with Instagram and Condé Nast to register voters.
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Participating media brands in the latest effort include Allure, Babble, Brides, Brit + Co, Bustle, Byrdie, CaféMom, Elite Daily, Essence, Glamour, Glossier, Goop, HBFit, Health, HerCampus, Hola!, HuffPost Women, InStyle, Latina, Lenny, MamásLatinas, Muslim Girl, MyDomaine, Nylon, Obsessee, Parents, Popsugar, Prevention, PureWow, Racked, Real Simple, Refinery29, Revelist, ScaryMommy, Self, SheKnows, Siempre Mujer, StyleCaster, StyleWatch, Teen Vogue, The Cut, The Frisky, TheSkimm, Vivala, Vogue, W, Well and Good, Who What Wear, Women’s Health, and xoJane.
In order to spread the word, participating brands will amplify the #OurVoteCounts initiative through their social platforms and sites with a custom voter registration tool created by Rock the Vote. Several editor in chiefs and founders of the sites will also hit the road to register voters across America as part of Rock the Vote’s bus tour, which is making stops through October.
Although the details are still being sorted out, editors Jane Pratt of xoJane, Robyn Moreno of Latina, Michelle Lee of Allure, Emma Gray of Huffington Post Women, Kate Ward of Bustle and Cindi Leive of Glamour will likely hit the road in October. The first stop is Ohio on Oct. 6 with additional stops at the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State and University of Illinois at Chicago.
The media properties will also reach out to influencers to support the initiative by posting and sharing the links to register. This will enable Rock the Vote to track the number of women registered to vote through the links on all participating sites.
The organization underscored the importance of young female voters — many of whom are supposedly readers of the aforementioned sites — by citing a voter statistic that showed that Millennial women are turning out at lower rates than their older peers.
According to the Center for American Women and Politics, 64 percent of eligible women voted in the 2012 election, while only 45 percent of women 18 to 24 marked their ballots, a Rock the Vote representative said.