Voter Power

Midterm elections have historically low turnout in the United States. Plazm encouraged voter engagement with a fun, participatory project leading up to the November 2018 election.

Bend Design Conference and Design Week Portland asked Plazm partner Joshua Berger to sit on a Citizen Designer panel. At the sold-out event, we set up a station where people could get their fists painted and photographed.

Voter Power was self-distributed through social shares of still images and video, then picked up by the AIGA Design for Democracy Initiative and Oregon Must Vote.

More than 49% of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot—the highest turnout for a midterm since 1914. The results broke all previous records for Congressional diversity. A record 117 women won seats; 42 of them were women of color, and three identify as LGBTQ.

This cohort also contains the first two Native American women, first Muslim woman, and the youngest female Representative ever to serve in the US Congress.

This campaign has been updated for each subsequent election year, with additional resources on plazm.com/vote

Photography: Sumaya Agha
Makeup Artist: Amelia Rasmussen-Berger
Soundtrack: Eric W. Mast

Services delivered: Content, Advertising