A Quick Guide to Effective Voter Turnout Campaigns
A voter turnout campaign needs to start long before Election Day so you can set your goals, build excitement among volunteers, and plan for compelling voter education that will generate excitement and build your movement. Here’s a quick guide with key steps and simple ideas that individuals or grassroots organizations can implement with little or no money.
If you decide to launch a voter education effort and a voter registration drive, please read the more detailed guidance in our Voter Empowerment & Civic Participation Manual.
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Tell people why their vote matters
Your organization hopes to achieve certain policy goals – and you know that it matters which politicians are elected into public office and which ballot initiatives pass or fail. But most people don’t understand why it matters to them. First and foremost, you must articulate clearly and simply why the campaign matters from the perspective of your supporters. There are common approaches that work well for nonprofit or civic groups:
· Create a voter guide that identifies key votes on issues of concern to your organization or movement, and hand it out as you register voters.
· Identify key issues that you will highlight in the future to hold newly elected officials accountable.
· Because motivated voter blocs are important in low turnout elections, you should identify trends in voter participation that spotlight the need for your base to be better represented on Election Day.
Use this newsletter and the TCJC website to find the most important criminal justice bills passed by lawmakers in the 2007 legislative session. Then you can identify votes of every state lawmaker (including those who will be running for re-election) here. Look up each bill by number, then – under the “History” tab and, specifically, “Actions” – you’ll see “Record vote” options for votes taken in committee and on the House or Senate floor. These votes can help you decide if your local lawmaker helped pass key reforms or stood in the way. Compile that information into a simple document that helps people understand why you want them to register to vote, and why their vote matters.
NOTE: If you are part of a nonprofit group, you should check the IRS lobbying rules as they pertain to your organization before publicly endorsing any specific bills or lawmakers.
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Before Election Day, get people registered to vote
Start months ahead so that your voters are registered in time
To vote on Election Day or during the early voting period in Texas, you must be registered. Voter registration is simple.
Voters must be registered 30 days before the next election. For the purpose of determining the effective date of a voter’s registration, if the 30th day before Election Day falls on a weekend or a legal state or federal holiday, the document is considered timely if it is submitted on the next regular business day. You can obtain voter registration applications from your voter registrar’s office, libraries, most post offices, or from the Secretary of State.
Registering voters
Volunteers and people in your affected community should apply to be deputy registrars! See our Voter Empowerment & Civic Participation Manual for more details.
As a deputy registrar, you can take stacks of voter registration cards to grocery stores, popular open air markets and events, concerts, and any other place where people gather – and get them registered!
To be eligible to register in Texas, people must be:
· U.S. citizens;
· residents of the county where they register;
· 18 years old (you may register at 17 years and 10 months);
· not convicted of a felony or a convicted felon whose sentence is completed, including any probation or parole (people who are “off paper” can register to vote again in Texas); and
· not declared mentally incapacitated by a court of law.
As people register, ask the newly registered voter if you can contact them before the next election with information about voting and collect their contact information. It will be critical for your movement that you create a list of people who know about your issues and goals and agree that they want to come to the polls on Election Day.
People who are already registered may tell you they recently moved. Voters must update their address information 30 days before an election. If voters mention they’ve moved since the last election, give them an address change form. For more information on address change rules, visit the Secretary of State website.
Prepare voters for new voting systems
This can be a great project for your organization just before an election. Encourage voters to get familiar with the electronic voting machines that are now in use in most Texas counties. The Secretary of State, a proponent of these machines, has posted an easy online system to run through the voter experience with the machine in use in your own county. The run-through is unlikely to highlight common problems experienced by voters, but it will help voters adjust to a new system they might otherwise find intimidating. Your voters can try the system here!
For voters who don’t have ready access to the Internet, you can print out screen shots of the various interfaces and volunteers can visit voters in their homes to go over what they are likely to experience on Election Day and answer questions.
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Voting on Election Day and Early Voting
Early voting and absentee voting
Early voting is increasingly important for political campaigns as more and more people have accessed the State’s easy systems for voting at more convenient times. You can get your voters out early by identifying those who can vote by mail and assisting them to do so, as well as by directing registered voters to the most convenient places to vote early (often the local grocery story, downtown courthouse, or shopping center).
People can vote by mail (casting an absentee vote) if they:
· will be away from their county on Election Day and during early voting;
· are sick or disabled;
· are 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
· are confined in jail.
You can download the application to vote by mail. Print copies and help people fill them out so that a ballot will be mailed to their homes.
Get them to the polls on Election Day
NOTE: Before you engage in any of the following activities, remember that you should check the IRS lobbying rules as they pertain to your organization prior to publicly endorsing any specific bills or lawmakers.
Flyering
Contact your county election official and get the location of each polling place right before Election Day. Hand out the location of the polling place and instructions for voting on flyers in your own neighborhood or in neighborhoods of your volunteers.
Voters must bring:
· a driver’s license or personal identification card; or
· another photo ID; or
· an original birth certificate; or
· United States citizenship papers; or
· a United States passport; or
· official mail addressed to the voter by name from a governmental entity like the Social Security Administration; or
· a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the voter’s name and address.
You can find the contact information for your County Election Administrators and they will give you the location of polling places.
Email
Email notification works. Many people today have email and check it regularly. You can send an electronic email reminder on Election Day with information about polling places to encourage voters to vote. This is a great way to use local volunteers. Your volunteer can go door-to-door in his or her own neighborhood and collect email addresses on behalf of your organization. You can then provide your volunteer with the location of the polling places for everyone in that neighborhood, and your volunteer can create a quick, friendly email to the neighbors reminding them to go vote.
Or, if you lack a base of volunteers who can email their own neighbors, you can send everyone to the email reminder system created by the Secretary of State here.
Phone them
Have you ever gotten phone calls on Election Day reminding you to vote? Most political campaigns do a very good job of phoning registered voters in high turnout precincts or swing precincts to make sure their prospective supporters get to the polls. But some precincts may not get that same level of attention. You can make your own precinct a more important factor in the electoral process by using the same techniques that the big campaigns use. Call your registered voters, and tell them why it’s important for your movement that they go to the polls.
You can get lists of registered voters with phone numbers from your election clerk here. All election clerks are listed by county.
Drive them to the polls
If you have volunteers willing to drive voters to the polls, that’s a great way to encourage turnout by elderly or otherwise homebound voters, people without transportation, and even people more likely go vote as part of a group with friends, neighbors, or relatives. Identify voters who would like a ride when your volunteers go door to door with the polling location flyer recommended above. Get their phone number so you can schedule their ride. Compile your list of people who want rides and create routes. Follow up with a phone call to each voter to confirm the ride and the time of pickup. This is a great time to remind the voter what they should bring to the polling place (currently, just an ID or their voter registration card). Each of these contacts gives you the opportunity to remind voters why it’s so important to your movement that they go to the polls and vote.
Talk to people as they leave the polling place and give them an original sticker
Help your precinct voters see their vote as part of a larger movement for reform by playing on the tradition of the “I voted” sticker. Your own creative “I voted” stickers [for example, “I voted – they didn’t count on that!”] can identify voters with your local movement for reform. You can produce hundreds of stickers by hand using a simple machine available at most hobby stores, or you can order them online from a wide variety of outlets.
This will give your volunteers a fun project and an opportunity to chat with voters as they leave the polls to monitor provisional voting and invite voters to attend the precinct meetings that cap off Election Day.
Provisional voting
A voter can vote without the proper ID or if not listed on the voter log, but the vote is “provisional” and won’t be immediately counted. You can help make sure that everyone gets to vote by asking people about the process as they leave the polls. Voters must complete “an affidavit of provisional voter” if:
· their name does not appear on the list of registered Voters; or
· they are listed as a first time Voter on the List of Registered Voters, but don’t produce proper ID; or
· they applied to vote by mail but then come to vote in person instead; or
· they vote during the polling hours that are extended by a state or federal court; or
· they attempt to vote in a different precinct from the one where they are registered; or
· they fail to present ID or a voter registration card.
By signing, voters swear that they are qualified to vote and that they are registered to vote. If the provisional voter completes the provisional affidavit, s/he must be permitted to vote. The registrar must notify the voter within ten days after the election as to whether the vote was counted. If the voter was not, in fact, registered, the provision ballot form acts as a voter registration.
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Precinct meetings
Once you cast your vote, Election Day isn’t over! You and your voter-supporters should attend the local precinct convention of the party of your choice, which will be held in the evening after the polls close in the same location where you voted.
These meetings give you a chance to actively participate in promoting criminal justice reform and other issues you care about in the political platform of your chosen party. Precinct conventions are open meetings, and everyone is a volunteer. It’s a great way for volunteers to meet others who believe in the importance of voting to achieve policy reform. At precinct conventions, voters may promote or oppose party platform ideas and decide together which issues are most important to prioritize in the coming year. Your agenda can become stronger with the support of precinct level party volunteers and allies in other precincts.
You can even run to become the precinct chair of your local political party in the precinct where you live. Contact your political party of choice for more details:
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Connecting Election Day back to the policy process
Your organization identified key policy goals that make voting important to people. Now that your voters have elected their representatives, it’s time to connect their goals to the policy-making opportunities in the next legislative cycle. The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition is currently creating a manual for effective grassroots advocacy based on what we’ve learned in our own advocacy efforts. We’ll let you know when it’s ready!