Voting has started

Hello friends,

Voting begins today on MoveOn.org's "Obama in 30 Seconds" contest. My submission made it past the screening and now it is up to people like you to get me into the next round.

The winner of the contest will win a $20,000 certificate good for professional Video equipment. I will be going up against many professionals, so if anyone needs the equipment, it's poor little me (where are all those tiny violins when you need a good pity party). At any rate here is the link to my video.

http://obamain30seconds.org/vote/?v=view-420-RJrCZD

Now, what I need from everyone. Please, please, please, write a post about the contest and include my link. If possible, put a link to my ad on your sidebar. Also, send an email to everyone you know and send them to my ad. Here are the rules and the way voting works.

The first way is to have one of the 10 highest-rated ads. In order to rate ads, people will go to the Obama in 30 Seconds website and click to get started. Then, they’ll be brought to a voting screen and shown their first ad. While they’re rating ads, voters will not be able to choose what ads they see; we’ll choose for them. This ensures that all of the ads get seen by lots of voters and that nobody is able to pump up an ad’s rating by asking people to just go and vote on that one ad. And of course, each voter will only be shown each ad once.

In the rating system, viewers will give each ad 1-5 stars in each of three categories: Overall Impact, which counts for 50%; Originality, which counts for 25%; and Positive Message, which counts for 25%. At the end of voting, the 10 ads with the highest average rating, using those criteria and weightings, will be finalists.

The second way to become a finalist is to have one of the five ads that’s watched by the highest number of unique viewers on the Obama in 30 Seconds website. For these “direct hits,” we’ll send you a link to your ad as soon as voting opens on Monday. We encourage you to pass the link around to friends and family, post it on your blog, or do anything else creative to drive people to the site to watch it. Each time someone follows that link and watches your ad on our site, we’ll count that toward your total viewers. Of course, people who watch an ad this way will have to enter their email address before they’re counted; this prevents fraud and makes sure it’s not one person just hitting refresh over and over.

It’s important to note that people who see your ad through the automatic voting system won’t be counted toward the number of viewers. But, on the voting page, we’ll provide the direct link to the ad they’re watching. That way, if somebody sees your ad while voting and loves it, they can show it to all their friends. And when they do, since their friends will be using the direct link to your ad, all of those viewers will count toward your total.

It's not often a lowly blogger wins this kind of contest. Hey, I decided to give it a shot. Now, please, give a fellow blogger a hand. If you're not an Obama supporter, that's okay, think of it as helping a fellow blogger. If you are an Obama supporter, then you have a chance for another Obama supporter's home made ad to run on National TV.

Here's thanking you in advance for your cooperation.

Robert