• by Kate Kaye , September 14, 2004

After registering women to vote through its online registration tool, Lifetime Television used data collected through those registrations to send e-mails to the would-be-voters, inquiring about their decision to bite the ballot-bullet.

Wrote one woman: "I am also a big Lifetime fan and feel that you inspire and empower women all over the country, so in short, you have convinced me that my vote can make a difference."

Just about everybody and her mother, from advocacy groups to media outlets, is trying to inspire the same response from women this election season. Since January, Lifetime has been promoting its get-out-the-female-vote effort, Every Woman Counts, through its TV channel, various events, and via its Web site.

"Women really respond to that massive impact they could have," explains Eileen Deparrie, director of public affairs at Lifetime Television. She says the woman-centric media firm is focused on "pointing out the impact that women can have when they all go out together on a massive scale" to vote. The site has registered "close to 1,000 women" since January, according to Deparrie. Lifetime yesterday launched three television Public Service Announcements intended to propel women to vote. According to Deparrie, the PSAs also will be available for viewing in the future on the Lifetime site.

A June George Washington University Battleground 2004 Poll showed that women account for 65 percent of undecided U.S. voters. The Pew Research Center for People and the Press found in a June study that women make up 58 percent of registered voters who are either undecided or said they may change their mind about who to vote for in the presidential election.

Democrats and Republicans are both after coveted women voters. The Bush-Cheney '04 campaign uses its "W Stands for Women" Web site to appeal to women, and has featured online chats with various women. Today's Web chat puts Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, in the virtual hot seat. In an effort to appeal to working mothers and garner media coverage, the campaign launched a streaming video ad in May 2004 starring First Lady Laura Bush. The ads focused on education and ran on sites such as AllRecipes.com, Parenting.com, and LHJ.com, the Ladies' Home Journal Web site.

The Democratic National Committee's Women's Leadership Forum invites women to register online to participate in its Take Five program. The targeted effort asks women to commit to building relationships with five unmarried women and ensuring that they cast their ballots this November.

There's a reason for the "unmarried" qualifier. According to a recent Gallup Poll of registered female voters conducted from March-August, 54 percent of married women favored Bush, compared to 41 percent who favored Kerry. For unmarried women, the numbers shift nearly twenty points each way; 60 percent chose Kerry, while 35 percent chose Bush.

People visiting The Feminist Majority Foundation's Get Out Her Vote Web site can virtually sign a pledge promising to make their voices heard on issues important to them--"especially women's rights, civil rights, peace, and the environment," as noted on the site. Like most online voter mobilization and registration campaigns, the site also petitions visitors to ask friends to "sign" the pledge.

"One Vote" is another drive to get women to the polls that has been pushed virally via e-mail. The 6-minute Web video pays homage to the women's suffrage movement and features unscripted interviews with several women about voting. It has been forwarded around the Web, as have other unrelated e-mail messages reminding women that they didn't always have the right to vote.

TurnOut, a group affiliated with gay rights organization The Gill Foundation, hopes to raise awareness of workplace inequality issues affecting gay people among heterosexual women under 50, and encourage them to consider such issues when voting in November. "Polls clearly indicate that women tend to vote with more empathy for social issues," suggests Senior Communications Manager Lisa Goettel.

Targeting niche audiences like specific groups of women is a natural for the Web, asserts Brian Reich, director, Boston Operations, for public affairs consultancy, Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, L.L.C. "Micro-targeting and engaging specific audiences will always be more effective than trying to use the Internet as a broadcast medium," he concludes.