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Business coalition turns to cyberspace to encourage voting

Nonpartisan Web site provides database of candidates and issues important to the workforce

Friday, Aug. 18, 2006

ANNAPOLIS — A group of businesses is establishing a Web site for employees to get more information about issues and candidates, hoping to increase the number of people with jobs who vote.

‘‘We’re a bit chagrined to find out how many [employees] don’t vote,” said Christopher Costello, a lobbyist for several business groups who is coordinating the Maryland Prosperity Project.

‘‘A lot of guys sit around and gripe that they don’t like this candidate or that candidate and then when you ask them if they voted, they say no. Are they registered? They say no,” said Jeffrie Zellmer, chairman of the project and legislative director for the Maryland Retailers Association.

The site, which also will include information and forms on registering to vote, already has the backing of the Maryland Retailers Association and Associated Builders and Contractors of Maryland. Other companies and trade associations are being courted to help finance the project.

Even with the business-oriented assistance, supporters say the site will be nonpartisan.

‘‘We’re not on one side of the highway or the other. We’re on the median strip,” Zellmer said.

Even so, Costello said the private sector would benefit if more employees voted.

The Prosperity Project hopes to reach as many as 200,000 Marylanders by the Nov. 7 general election through its Web site.

The project will survey candidates on energy, health care, lawsuit abuse, transportation, taxes — issues that are important, not only to employers, but to the employees.

Workers would access the site through its own Web address, or from links on their company Web sites, Costello said. Individual companies also would be able to ask candidates questions specific to their industries that their employees could access.

The project hopes that kind of company-to-employee connection encourages more workers to head to the polls on Election Day.

Nancy Soreng, president of the Montgomery County League of Women Voters, said studies show that people tend to vote more often if someone, even a boss, asks them to.

The league targeted five precincts with low voter registration or low voter turnout with voters guides and registration drives. The precincts recorded statistically increased registration and turnout, she said.

The project is getting support from the Business Industry Political Action Committee of Washington. BIPAC has created similar prosperity projects in other states in previous elections. Prosperity projects will be in place in 30 states for the 2006 elections, said Lauren S. Yates, BIPAC’s director of communications and marketing.

BIPAC looks for two-party competition to choose states to launch prosperity projects. The organization was encouraged to come to Maryland because of the close governor’s race, the appeal of Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (R) in the U.S. Senate race, and the number of open state Senate seats, Costello said.