prior voting campaigns and how to mobilize voters in your community
According to demographic data on statista.com, Millennials and Gen Zers made up almost half of the U.S. population in 2018. Younger voters, however, are less likely to participate in elections. Exercising your right to vote is your opportunity to initiate national change: to protect your interests as an American citizen, to garner fiercer political power and leave a lasting impact as a generation. A look at Get Out the Vote campaigns from the 2016 presidential election sheds light on the work that has been done to boost voter participation, and the ways citizens, like yourself, can introduce similar efforts in their own communities.
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AIGA
AIGA, the professional association for design, harnessed “the power of design” to encourage Americans to register and take to the polls, their “About” page explains. This organization partnered with the League of Women Voters and offered a number of activities for motivating civic engagement: exhibitions, “an online gallery of original, nonpartisan posters for printing and public distribution,” and local events organized by AIGA chapters and student groups, according to their website. AIGA’s 75 chapters (see the link in the sources below), like the one located in Salt Lake City, hosted activities such as a Get Out the Vote poster design-a-thon, where participants were invited to create nonpartisan posters for AIGA’s 2016 online gallery and exhibitions.
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#VotingBecause
In 2016, the USA TODAY Network established a registration and civic engagement initiative, “Voting Because,” which aimed to facilitate the November vote and gather information about the key issues, according to Kelsey Sutton in her POLITICO article, “USA Today Network launches get-out-the-vote campaign.” USA TODAY partnered with more than 100 publications nationally, as well as organizations like Rock The Vote and the National League of Women Voters, Sutton explains. In 2016, Americans were able to participate in the #VotingBecause campaign on Twitter and Snapchat by linking the hashtag to photos and videos with their reasons for voting. The USA TODAY editorial board published an article in January, where they announced the campaign’s return and its interactive tools for helping potential voters verify their registration status, register, acquire absentee ballots and inform themselves about the issues.
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Organizations
A number of nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations have been founded to mobilize higher voter registration and turnout rates. The Voter Participation Center (VPC), for example, is dedicated “to increasing voter registration in the United States among young people, people of color and unmarried women” and boasts a data-driven, collaborative and high impact approach, according to its “About” page.
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Like the VPC, Vote.org provides tools on their website for registering to vote, checking one’s registration status and requesting an absentee ballot. Guests can also use the website to pledge to register on their 18th birthday. Vote.org connects with “low-propensity voters” using “peer-to-peer SMS outreach, online advertising, digital radio (Pandora and Spotify), billboards and other outdoor media, direct mail, and on-campus advertising,” according to their “About” page.
Additionally, Project Vote runs “large-scale voter registration drives and Get Out the Vote programs that place paid canvassers—occasionally volunteers—of local community organizations in high traffic sites in neighborhoods of color,” their website says. Project Vote staff also maintained an active social media presence on Twitter during the 2016 presidential election (find them @ProjectVote).
Finally, Rock the Vote, another nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, initiated a “Truth to Power” campaign which sought to mobilize Millennial voter turnouts, according to a press release published in July 2016. As the press release explains, “The campaign aims to register an additional 2 million young voters before November and help drive turnout of voters under 30 in targeted battleground states.” Working digitally and on the ground, the #TruthToPower campaign worked in battleground states like Arizona, Colorado and Florida and partnered “with top entertainment and creative talent to create a series of compelling political content aimed at engaging and mobilizing Millennials,” their website says. They also partnered with activist groups and organizations like Voto Latino, PushBlack and APIAVote.
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Organizing Your Own Events
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Although in-person gatherings were discouraged between the months of March and May for nonessential services, and although it’s uncertain how COVID-19 will affect gatherings during the summer months, you and your friends can still arrange Get Out the Vote events on social media. Perhaps you and a group could recreate the #VotingBecause initiative, posting photos and videos with the reasons why you look forward to casting a ballot in the 2020 presidential election. USA TODAY has reinstated the campaign for 2020, which means your posts may be picked up by the media, encouraging other young voters to participate and interact with the “Voting Because” resources.
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When in-person gatherings are permitted again, consider joining an AIGA chapter or student group nearest to you, and keep an eye out for their 2020 Get Out the Vote initiatives. Or get your creativity flowing by designing a poster on your own and sharing it on social media. Perhaps you could even plan a poster design event at your high school or college campus.
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In their book "Get Out the Vote! How to Increase Voter Turnout," Yale University colleagues Alan Gerber and Donald P. Green argue that canvassing and knocking on doors is more effective than impersonal means of communication, as explained in a Brookings Institution op-ed from October 2004, “Event Summary: Voter Mobilization and Turnout.” Consider handing out fliers or forming a Facebook or email group directing members of your community to the Voter Participation Center, Vote.org, Project Vote, the #TruthToPower campaign and the Voting 101 civic engagement campaign, where they can find free resources for registering to vote, requesting absentee ballots and more. Or, you and your classmates, friends or family might plan in-person events on your high school campus (for students eligible to vote), college campus or in your neighborhood, offering these tools on a portable computer for your community members to use. Students under the age of 18 could attend an event where they use Vote.org’s “Pledge to Register” tool, where one signs up for a text message on their 18th birthday with a voter registration guide. Meanwhile, registering to vote on Vote.org only takes two minutes – imagine how many people could become registered voters in just one hour! College students may also consider partnering with Vote.org to host a podcast or digital radio event marketed for potential voters in their age group.
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