two stories

A

21.5 % of respondents who failed to vote in the 1996 elections said they had no time.

As the world becomes more globalized and the internet expands exponentially, many people feel overwhelmed and overbooked in their daily schedules, and have a hard time escaping and finding time to relax and take their minds off constant worries. Instead of portraying voting as another responsibility, it might help to show it as a break from regular programming and a (perhaps righteous, even) escape to make choices that can easily affect everyday lives.

or

People make many ridiculous excuses or various reasons for not finding time to go to the polls (embarrassing reference: You've Got Mail's Meg Ryan character who was getting her hair done instead). This tactic would be more negative, implying guilt on the public by showing what else people have time to do: stop to get coffee, spend time surfing gossip sites, going out to party, etc. yet can't find time to make it to the polls.

B

In Palm Beach County, FL alone, Tuesday's primary and November's general election will eat up more than 178,400 pounds of paper ballots: that's about 90 tons, or 21 Hummer H2s.

This tactic targets the supposedly "green" tactics that each election promises yet never quite delivers. Optical-scan voting is an electronic scanning system that scans marked paper ballots; it uses technology to tabulate but still wastes an incredible amount of paper. If you've seen the movie Brazil, you know that government paperwork can be incredibly wasteful, and this is just the example. Although electronic voting technology can be vulnerable to hacking or foul play, obviously this has been an issue with manual tabulation as well. By making clear how much waste this method uses, maybe individual voters can make a difference in getting the government to rethink mediocre solutions.