The Heartthrob Vote

Every election cycle campaigns try to figure out how to motivate the youth vote to show up for their candidates, and every election cycle the effort largely fails.  For decades, regardless of the candidates or issues, the youth vote has largely ignored the election.

This year some Democrats are hoping a guy who isn't even old enough to vote...or for that matter an American citizen... can help them win:

Internet-savvy types know that teen heartthrob Justin Bieber pretty much rules the web. Just last week, rumor spread that Bieber’s fan base was so active on Twitter that the microblogging website has servers dedicated just to him. Twitter didn’t confirm, but they didn’t deny it, either.

The takeaway? If you're trying to get a message to go viral, your success rate will surely be higher if you can somehow tie-in the Biebs.

So that’s just what Campus Progress, the college spinoff of the Center for American Progress, decided to do to get people to vote in the midterms.

The organization is highlighting a submission to its VoteAgain2010 video contest that argues, while Bieber can't vote in our midterms (he's both too young and too Canadian), shouldn't you?

"This isn't your standard election year video of celebrities asking you to vote," the ad says. "It's us, asking you to vote for celebrities who can't, celebrities like Justin Bieber. Bieber's too young to vote, yet whomever we elect in the 2010 midterm elections will impact his future and ours. ... So tell your parents, your grandparents, your Facebook friends ... If they won't do it for you, ask them to do it for Bieber."

"We're trying to leverage Bieber fever," Campus Progress's Sara Haile-Mariam told POLITICO. "Most of his fans are 12 years old – we acknowledge that." Still, they hope that Bieber fans will “tell their parents. ... The hope is to create something that goes viral and gets young people to be aware of the election."

Yeah, a lot of parents take their election advice from their 12-year old daughters.