Like a Rock The Vote for this election's teenagers, UR Votes Count is the latest interactive political sounding board for students. The website is sparkling and entertaining, with hip graphics, cool lingo, and millennial-friendly advertisers, or, um, "friends" like Sprint, CosmoGIRL!, and Discover Card. The target audience is 13 to 17 year-olds. but the to-the-point writing style and fun format would be appealing to young voters, too.

UR Votes Count breaks down the candidate's platforms by issue. and from there, summarizes their stance in concise bullet points (Obama on education: believes math and science education should be a higher priority; McCain on social security: believes social security program is “going broke” and that Americans must sacrifice to fix it).

To spread the word about their cause, the website is hitting 150 malls in 42 states in 6 weeks, and, as the national spokesperson, Disney star Selena Gomez - you were expecting that, right? - hosted the kickoff party. The company is using the promise of mall entertainment and shopping deals to lure in tweens and teens, but I'm not sure that will work. As I've mentioned before, malls aren't quite the cool hangouts they once were.

To get a taste of the website's style, here's a peek at their "About Me" and "FAQ":

What is it? It’s a website located on the worldwide web. (World famous). “Duh” you say. Well this site is also a place to find out about issues affecting the election. We tried to have some fun with it, because involvement is anything but Snoresville.

What can you find? You can find all kinds of things. Colors, pictures, more colors, but you can also find out about our election process, issues, our mall events, and get free stuff!

How can I contact my elected officials? You could hire a sky writing company to write your issues in the sky above Washington. But it’s probably cheaper and faster to just use this site: Declare Yourself [editor's note: Declare Yourself is a nonprofit, but they signed on as a partner and set up shop at each event to register eligible voters online].

What's the deal? Why do you want us to vote at malls when we can't vote in the election? Because UR voice matters. We want to know how you feel - and we're going to make sure the results are heard.

So the media reports it. What difference does that make? Politicians listen. They have to. After all…you'll be voting in the next election. The media reports what citizens care about - and that puts it on the politicians' radar. UR voice truly counts. It helps to shape the political agenda

Text lingo, teen slang, and sass? It's [almost] like a 15-year-old wrote it herself.

The website is also on Facebook, but so far it's only drawn 86 fans compared to Rock the Vote with over 40,000). This could be because it's still new, while Rock the Vote has been around for years….

Speaking of, here's a quick roundup of other teen/youth focused election resources — we've mentioned lots of these in Essentials and thought we would make a short list. Feel free to add any we missed in the comments!

18in08
Be Counted (Facebook application)
Declare Yourself
Rock The Vote
Scholastic: Election '08
PBS Blueprint for Civic Engagement
MTV Choose or Lose '08
League of First Time Voters

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