NFIB

Businesses Boost Get-Out-the-Vote Efforts
03/22/2004

Companies are ramping up their efforts to encourage their employees to vote, the Washington Post reported this week.

With such a delicate balance of power in Washington, businesses are encouraging their employees to vote in hopes to make sure that the scale remains in favor of business.

"Employees will vote their companies' interest," Brian Lunde, general manager at Edelman Communications in Washington, D.C., told the Post. "You just have to be very careful about pushing stuff down their throats."

According to the Business Roundtable, an organization that represents 150 chief executives of the nation's largest corporations, there has been a significant increase in the number of companies providing voter registration services to their employees. Ninety-nine of the 150 companies in the Business Roundtable are participating in a voter registration program this year, compared to only 27 companies in the 2002 election.

"Companies have been reluctant to do this for decades, but now it's not just acceptable, it's desirable," Michael Baroody, executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers told the Post. "The potential here is very big, even transformational."

Read the entire Washington Post article, "Businesses Point Workers Toward Ballot Boxes." (Site registration required)