Plan Your Vote Enfranchises the Electorate with Art

This year will be the biggest election year in history. A total of 76 countries will hold scheduled elections in 2024, with more than four billion people—just over half of the human population—being eligible to vote. In the US, voter turnout is lower than in other developed countries—coming in at about 60 percent in presidential elections, as compared to 70 percent in its counterparts. There are several factors that prevent voters from participating, one of these being voter suppression, which comprises various legal and illegal efforts—such as imposing strict ID laws, cutting voting times, restricting registration and purging voter rolls—to prevent eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote. In 2023 alone, 150 voter suppression bills were introduced in 32 states; in 2022, 250 restrictive bills were introduced in 27 states. These tactics disproportionately affect people of color and those from low-income backgrounds. Data shows that wealthy Americans vote at much higher rates than those who earn less and, of course, this in turn affects public policy and who it serves.

Plan Your Vote—an initiative led by Christine Messineo, Frieze’s Director of Americas, in partnership with Vote.org—attempts to address these issues and encourage voting. It utilizes the potent visual languages of an incredible roster of artists, including Derrick Adams, Wangechi Mutu, Calida Rawles, Laurie Simmons and Hank Willis Thomas, whose pieces are emblazoned with the text “PLAN YOUR VOTE.ORG” and available for people to download and share. Since 2020, moreover, visitors to Frieze New York and Los Angeles have been able to check and confirm their registration status and plan the logistics of voting in person or in absentia in their state. Since inception, the Plan Your Vote initiative has generated more than 20 million media impressions and more than 10,000 voter verifications and registrations via Vote.org.

To date, Vote.org has registered more than 4.7 million voters, verified 10.9 million voters’ registration status and helped more than 4.3 million request their mail-in ballot. In addition to providing everything Americans need to register and vote, Vote.org has also taken legal action against voter suppression in Texas, Georgia and Florida. To symbolize the nefarious, tangible impact of voter suppression tactics, last year at Frieze New York and Los Angeles visitors were given water bottles inscribed with the word “banned,” referencing a Georgia law banning the distribution of food and drinks at polling stations. The bill’s passage came on the heels of the 2020 election, when Vote.org handed out water bottles to voters who had to wait in hours-long lines to cast their ballot. The long lines were an intentional attempt to keep voters from the ballot box, the result of closed polling places in specific, targeted communities.

As Andrea Hailey, CEO of Vote.org, tells me: “The ‘Banned’ water bottles were a powerful way of drawing attention to laws that are aimed at washing people out of the process and picking and choosing voters instead of letting voters pick leaders.” She continues: “Plan Your Vote has been very impactful for us. We’ve been able to work with artists, museums and institutions to register thousands of people, many of whom we wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise. The coalition that has come together here joins creative forces with corporate leaders and schools from throughout America—that’s the way you fight encroaching authoritarianism. It’s so important to show what’s happening in this country and to make sure that everyone can have their voice heard and knows that they can use a trusted, nonpartisan source to do that.”

The success of politics demands a capability to reimagine the world. Such thinking is innate to artists, making their collaborations with politicians and policymakers a petri dish for radical and innovative action. The artist-as-activist is a role that is well documented throughout history. Joseph Beuys was one such firm believer in the political power of art and he encouraged his students to engage in activism alongside him. In his 1973 work Demokratie ist lustig (Democracy Is Merry), we see a screen-printed photograph of a smiling Beuys being escorted away from a sit-in with his students, which protested the undemocratic institutional practices at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Following the sit-in, Beuys was dismissed from his post. As certain as it is that democracy will always be under siege, so it is that artists will be ready to take up arms in its defense.

For the third consecutive year, Vote.org will be on site at Frieze New York registering voters. To download and share artworks from the Plan Your Vote campaign, visit planyourvote.org

Further Information

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^{Main Image: Christine Sun Kim, 2020. Courtesy: the artist and planyourvote.org}