August 2, 2012
Dear Mr. Wilbur,
King County Elections launched the “Be an Informed Voter” campaign in 2010, featuring local broadcasting celebrities to help connect with voters with key messages. KCE had two key goals: reducing voter errors that drive up elections administrative costs and reducing voter errors that prevent ballots from being counted. Now in its third successful year, other government agencies that share our goals have partnered with King County to help expand and reinforce outreach to voters.
The effort continues to rely on the local broadcast celebrities who helped launch the campaign (including Jean Enerson, Dennis Bounds, John Carlson, Ken Schram, Kent Phillips and Daryl Summers) and has expanded in 2012 to include people who are known for a variety of talents (including Travel Guru Rick Steves, Chef Tom Douglas, and Seattle Storm players Tina Thompson and Kate Smith) that can be compared and contrasted to elections key messages (such as the importance of following directions).
The talent that we recruited were targeted and selected because of their public persona and popularity as recognized celebrities from the Puget Sound area, not because of any personal beliefs.
All messages represented by the spots are about the process of voting and are politically neutral. On-air talent is not identified by political party preference and voters have no reason to believe that the talent’s pro bono appearance in a public service announcement promotes any particular candidate or support of a political position.
Each celebrity talent has provided his or her time and image as a public service contribution and no current or recent candidates for office have been featured in our ads.
We searched for talent that would help connect voters to our targeted messages.
Regarding the issue of using celebrities known for political preference, although this has not been a factor in recruiting or screening out talent for our spots, John Carlson is perhaps the celebrity associated with this campaign that is best known for his party preference. John is also one of the two celebrities where the greatest investment of our on air campaign has occurred at KOMO radio and he has been a great partner in our “Be an informed voter” campaign.
Since the campaign’s inception, I have regularly briefed elections stakeholders (including major political parties and the Citizens Elections Oversight Committee) about the intent of the campaign and the celebrities associated with it with no concern being raised with respect to our choices.
The “Informed” campaign is serving us well and the comments we have received about it have been highly positive. More importantly, the campaign is delivering the outcomes we sought, translating into tax payer savings and more ballots arriving at King County Elections without problems.
Sincerely,
Sherril Huff, Director
King County Elections