When Guatemalan election officials needed help driving traffic to their new website and guiding voters through the online registration process, IFES responded with a few fingers.
Playing on the electoral symbolism of ink-stained fingers the characters in the Deditos (little fingers in Spanish) campaign — including Deduardo Palma, Dedana Hellas and a crew of finger-shaped elections workers — helped guide Guatemalans through the online voter registration process in advance of the Sept. 11 national elections.
The characters were so successful that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE, for its acronym in Spanish) adopted the Deditos as its official civic education campaign. Since then, with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the characters appeared in television, radio and online advertisements across the country urging voters to register or verify their information before the June 11 deadline.
The multimedia campaign seeks to engage Guatemalans in an electoral cycle distinguished by constitutional challenges and attempts at increased transparency. As the country’s legal institutions sort out the candidacy of First Lady Sandra Torres, who has divorced her husband President Álvaro Colom to circumvent a law preventing close relatives from running for an incumbent’s seat, the TSE is seeking to widen the spotlight on political finance and strengthen its connection with Guatemala’s youth and indigenous voters.
To maximize the campaign’s reach before the registration deadline, the Deditos ads were supplemented with media notices, billboards and signs in public spaces telling voters the procedures and documents they can use to register or verify their information. The ads — which bear slogans such as “If you voted for American Idol, why not vote for Guatemala?” and “Don’t let others decide for you” — have appeared on Facebook and in publications including Prensa Libre and Nuestro Diario.
To further involve young Guatemalans in the electoral process, IFES distributed 40,000 bumper stickers through the TSE’s volunteer program, which is made up of more than 2,000 high school students nationwide.
In addition, TSE Chair María Eugenia Villagrán de León pledged to extend voter education efforts to Guatemala’s indigenous population by translating resources for the first time into the country’s four principal Mayan languages. IFES worked with the Mayan Languages Academy to produce radio advertisements in K’iche, Mam, Kaqchikel and Q’eqchi.
“Guatemala has an estimated 55 percent of Indigenous population with more than 20 local languages,”says IFES Chief of Party for Guatemala Máximo Zaldivar Calderón. “For this reason it was imperative for the TSE to reach out to this demographic in a fair and inclusive manner.”
Although the voter registration process ended in early June, the TSE plans to introduce a second phase of civic education in the run up to the September elections. The UNDP-funded effort may feature new designs in place of the Deditos, but Zaldivar said the characters likely will continue to help voters navigate the electoral process on the TSE’s website.
All four Spanish-language Deditos videos can be seen online on YouTube or at the TSE’s official website.