Wondering how you can help promote voting without leaving the comfort of your house? Awkward about texting, uncomfortable with virtual phone banking, unable to get out to make calls or knock doors? Then Vote Forward is the GOTV Support Activity tailor-made for you.
Vote Forward is based on a two-part strategy to promote voting by people who tend not to participate in mid-term elections. First, that people will respond positively to being encouraged to vote; second, that personal, hand-addressed letters will get people’s attention because they’re different from the usual campaign literature.
Chris Reeves explained the other aspect of its appeal last Sunday. For those of us with intransigent, hopelessly beholden GOP legislators, writing to them can seem futile, a total waste of time. That’s where Vote Forward comes in, giving you a chance instead to
Send a letter, a warm note, good feelings, to someone you don’t know — but who needs to hear from you. That’s right — write a letter to a constituent in [a GOP-held] district, a registered Democrat who doesn’t always vote, and tell them, as a FRIEND, how important it is for them to turn out.
When you join Vote Forward, you’re assigned to a toss-up Congressional District relatively nearby. Then you’re offered the option of writing to 5 or 25 intermittent voters in that district. The program then generates letters for you to download and print, supplying you with the voters’ names and addresses. There are only a few blank sections for you to fill in by hand: the name of the voter; the reason you are a regular voter; and your signature.
You then hand-address an envelope with the voter’s address, using a standard return address that Vote Forward supplies. Easy-peasy! I did it myself yesterday, and the whole process took about 20 minutes even with a careful read of the documentation, a viewing of the YouTube introduction, and my usual printer glitches.
Vote Forward began last year with the Alabama Senate special election that Doug Jones won. The Analyst Institute conducted a study after the election, and found these letters bumped voter turnout by about 3%. So for every 100 letters someone wrote, 3 more people went to the polls who would not have otherwise cast a ballot.
It continued with the Ohio special election in August, and now it’s gone national to include (to date) a few dozen Congressional districts. If the pattern continues, then we’ll have a lot of new Democratic victories to celebrate on November 6th!
It’s easy to take part, though you do need to supply a few items yourself. You’ll need a printer and a safe space to set aside your completed letters until it’s time to mail them. You’ll also need to contribute envelopes and postage for every letter you complete.
But that’s relatively little to ask for the potential return these letters can have. The margin of victory in the districts that Vote Forward is targeting could be as small as 2-3%, or a few hundred votes. Wouldn’t you like to have bragging rights later that you helped to flip a Congressional District blue? I thought you would.
One more piece of information: This activity is so popular, there is a bit of a bottleneck for authorizing your account after you sign up. (Nowadays, one can’t simply assume that everyone seeking to take part has good intentions, so there is a screening process.) The Vote Forward crew is working to increase the rate of account approval, and also striving to ensure fast answers to user-interface questions. You should be good to go about 24 hours after your initial sign-up.
It’s also true that Vote Forward can still use financial support. The organization is paying for the names and addresses of voters, and several of the Congressional Districts they targeted have already been completely covered by eager letter-writers. So if you’d like to chip in, please visit their donation portal.
Once you get into it, you may decide to move up to the next level: hosting letter-writing parties! This is how some of the districts have already been completely covered, by people looping in their friends to pick up 5, 25, or more voters to write. If you decide to try that, please let us all know in the comments. We’re very interested in how it turns out, or in how it went if you’ve done it already.
Ready to step up? We’re happy to have your help! VOTE FORWARD!