I love it when a plan comes together. A few weeks ago, I went to a San Francisco Giants game with James Hong and Jim Young from Am I Hot or Not and a few of their interns. During our conversation at the game, James proposed the idea of using a monetary incentive to get citizens to vote in this November's Presidential election. The idea is to set up a contest that would be entered by voting, and would pay out a large sum of money to a randomly selected voter, assuming he could prove he actually voted. Two of the assertions that lead James to the idea were: 1. Lots of people don't feel empowered by the democratic process and thus don't vote. 2. People like to play games of chance with money. We found out that it is impossible to verify whether a voter has actually voted, but it is possible to verify voter registration status, so they decided to base it on registration. In the span of a few weeks, they created Vote or Not. They've put together $200,000 in prize money for their "Register to Vote Sweepstakes".
While the idea may not be as viral as rating pictures of hot coeds, I'm hoping it encourages people to send in their voter registration card, and make it to the polls in November. Hit the site and sign up. You too could be a winner....