A corporate effort to ensure all citizens have a voice this election

Fri Oct 23 14:00:00 UTC 2020
Colleen Olphert

Members of the Boston College for Corporate Citizenship are invited to discuss these issues with CSR peers in our upcoming Member Meetup: Get out the vote: Encouraging civic engagement on Thurs Oct 28 @ 3pm ET.

On September 17, 2020, ViacomCBS, in partnership with the Ad Council, launched Vote For Your Life, a mass voter registration, early voting, and get-out-the-vote campaign crafted to respond to the specific challenges of the 2020 election season.

The campaign is designed to lead voters to these tools that make it easy to quickly check their registration status, request a ballot, and make a plan to vote early. More voters are interested in voting early by mail or drop box, but many are not already familiar with the steps required to vote this way.

As part of this campaign and continuing in its legacy of expanding voter access—particularly for young people and first-time voters—MTV (a ViacomCBS channel) is funding the cost of printing and mailing ballot applications for American voters.

“With the pandemic, social injustices, protesting, and environmental catastrophes like the wild fires on the West Coast and the hurricanes on the East Coast, our audiences are facing unprecedented and life-wrenching decisions which make the 2020 election so important to their daily lives,” said Chris McCarthy, president, entertainment and youth group, at ViacomCBS. “That’s why we launched the Vote For Your Life campaign to give them the resources to vote safely and as early as possible.”

Similarly, Crystal Barnes, senior vice president, culture and corporate social responsibility at ViacomCBS, has taken a leadership role in Vote Early Day 2020 (Saturday, October 24), a collaboration among media companies, nonprofits, technology platforms, election administrators, influencers, and other businesses to help all eligible voters learn about their early voting options and celebrate the act of voting early. This coalition of over 1000+ partners (including Twitter, Snapchat, Univision, and MTV) is on a mission to make sure the 200+ million eligible voters across the country understand their options to vote early on or before Saturday, October 24th and make voting early easier than ever before.

MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central—all channels of ViacomCBS—have also joined forces to help formerly incarcerated people vote in Florida. These brands teamed up with Florida Rights Restoration Coalition by donating $250,000 to help their efforts to increase voter access by helping this community pay off fines and fees that keep them from voting. “The fees and fines that returning citizens are being forced to pay to cast a ballot are a modern-day poll tax that is being used to keep marginalized people from voting—and it disproportionately affects Black voters. We are pleased to partner with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition to do our part to ensure every American who wants to cast a ballot this election can do so,” said Brianna Cayo Cotter, senior vice president of social impact for ViacomCBS. “We are committed to using our platforms and our reach to advance equity for people of color who are too often left out of the system and we urge other companies to join us in this campaign for voting access and racial justice.”

Members of the Boston College for Corporate Citizenship are invited to discuss these issues with CSR peers in our upcoming Member Meetup: Get out the vote: Encouraging civic engagement on Thurs Oct 28 @ 3pm ET.

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