2005 New York City Video Voter Guide

While not riveting television, the New York City Video Voter Guide represents a huge leap forward in the use of television as a medium for non-partisan voter education. The Video Voter Guide provided all New York City voters an opportunity both through television cablecast as well as internet web cast to hear from the candidates seeking to represent them, by allowing candidates for New York City municipal office to appear, free-of-charge, and make a statement. A huge percentage of candidates took advantage of this wonderful tool, and the cablecast represented the first time that New York City voters ever received, in their own homes, video statements from the candidates seeking to represent them. This program was also translated into Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Korean so that voters with those primary languages could also be afforded the opportunity to watch and learn from the program. New York is on the forefront of this technology and this show was a great start to a new tradition of multimedia voter education.