Vote or Die

During the 2004 presidential election P Diddy tried to institutionalize the social pressure that goes along with voting that we discussed in class. THIS link shows the Vote or Die campaign by Diddy to try and make voting "sexy" as he puts it. This is an interesting twist on the social pressure that we talked about though. This campaign was trying to generate social pressure for people less likely to vote, mostly young voters. Also, this campaign was trying to generate social pressures in an urban environment as opposed to a smaller community where everyone knows each other. He also got A list celebrities like Paris Hilton and Mariah Carey (it was 2004 when these people were still relevant) to support his campaign trying to create social pressure for young voters.

This campaign was critiqued as glorified voter intimidation and a poor publicity stunt disguised as an attempt to make a difference. Diddy justified his campaign as trying to make a difference and strengthen our democracy, which plays on the ethical pressure aspects we talked about in class: people can rarely give a good reason why they don't vote or why they don't support a campaign trying to raise voter participation. Voter participation by youth did raise in 2004, the specific data is here, but I don't know if we should attribute this specifically to Vote or Die.