Votergasm.org might be rife with crude, sexually-explicit drawings, photos of scantily-clad women and promises of action for people who vote, but people who take the Web site too seriously need to re-evaluate why they don't think it's funny.
No one is going to run home to their dorm, log onto the Web site, make a pledge to sex up other voters and dance around screaming, "I'm gonna get some" in front of their computer monitor. Pledges to engage in sex in celebration of civic duty is not a threat to modern democracy, nor does it provide any impetus for illicit sex romps - what it is, is well, funny.
There is no guarantee that anyone will actually get laid the instant they step out of the voting booth on Nov. 2 - not even the webmasters lay claim to such an impossible scenario. What the site does is poke a jab at the way the youth vote is seen by politicians and older generations of voters - the same people who have missed the point and tried to attract high school and college-aged voters with pop music.
A huge problem there, is that not every young person cares about presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry watching MTV. Most people, however, like to think of themselves as big fans of comedy. And in general, the younger the audience, the less they mind sexual humor.
The site won't cause the moral backslide of the entire continental United States. So people can stop worrying that the vehicle of courting the youth vote will change from music, to sex and subsequently to drugs. Yes, it is unfortunate that sex is used to combat apathy, but let's not confuse the creators of Votergasm.org with Thomas Paine.
The people who will be attracted to the site probably won't take the promises of sex too seriously. What they will notice is that it speaks to them about how absurdly their demographic is seen and treated. This, believe it or not, might get into the heads of some people who probably wouldn't have voted to begin with. The thought of getting sex in exchange for voting, though they realize it won't happen anyway, would be funny enough to drive them gleefully to the polls.
Even if they would have voted anyway, the site is bound to start conversations among friends. These conversations amongst potential voters could lead to serious discussion and bring more people to the polls.
People gravitate toward controversy. TV shows such as "South Park" gained a larger fan base every time an overly pushy parental or religious group called for its removal from television. The nine people who created the Votergasm site, all recent graduates of Columbia and Harvard universities, probably had this phenomenon in mind while drafting and planning the site.
While the Web site's method might cause the more sexually reserved to cringe, there is no time in which a drive to get more people voting can be seen as entirely wrong. In a country rebounding from an election that proved every vote really did matter, we don't have much choice but to try any means necessary to get fellow citizens to exercise their democratic rights and voice their opinions officially through the elective process.
