GOTV

The author prepares for Trick or Vote in 2007

Pop Quiz Time:

1. What is the single most effective way to mobilize voters?
   a) Visibilities
   b) Sitting on a couch and bitching
   c) Talking to ‘em face-to-face
2. What holiday always immediately precedes Election Day and has a built-in tradition of door-knocking?
   a) Halloween
   b) The 4th of July
   c) Festivus
3. What does everyone love?
   a) Rick Rolling
   b) Costumes!
   c) Voting
   d) All of the above

All of us who work in the field of youth engagement face big competition. The biggest competition we face – for volunteers, for attention – is not from one another’s organizations either. It’s from the Wii (which is sweet) and the bar scene and friends and loved ones. Our biggest challenge is overcoming that noise and building a politics that is fun and exciting and relevant to people’s lives.

That’s what makes Trick or VoteTM so freaking sweet. It’s the Best Way on the Best Day.

It’s actually such a sweet idea it doesn’t even really need an explanation. But here it is in a nutshell: Get some people who are a bit too old to trick or treat (go as young as high school and as old as the retirement home for your recruitment), rally ‘em in costume, meet in a centralized location, train these folks to canvass effectively, and knock some doors.

In short, we combine a cultural more (knock doors on Halloween) with hard-minded political research (knocking doors is an effective voter mobilization tool).

The result?

• More volunteers. In Portland in 2004, 850 canvassers assembled for the largest mass canvass in the history of the state. By all accounts, this year will be even bigger.
• More virgin volunteers. Out of that same crowd in Portland, more than one-in-three were first-time political volunteers who came out of the woodwork for a program well-suited to help our fellow citizens lose their voter virginity.
• More conversations. On Halloween evening, people are home – either waiting for trick-or-treaters or getting ready for their parties. They’re even prepared to open the door. And they’re definitely ready to engage in a conversation. All of which means that we don’t just hit more doors, we hit more doors in a more effective manner.
• More voters. Do the math -- more canvassers, more conversations, and more doors? More people are hitting the polls.

The Bus Federation wants to take Trick or VoteTM national this year – and we can do it with your help. If you’re part of a local or national organization that is serious about doing Trick or VoteTM, get in touch soon so we can coordinate our efforts. Contact Alex Aronson at the Oregon Bus Project @ 503-233-3018.

Just looking for a project for the fall and think you could pull off a kick-ass Trick or Vote in your hometown? Or even just want to assemble 15 of your closest friends and friends-of-friends and friendly-friends-of-friends’-friends and go hit some doors? Drop us a line. I swear to you, you’ll be glad you did.

Major props, by the way, to our friends at the Bus for this innovative program -- Trick or Vote is their brainchild.

Answers to the pop quiz: 1-b, 2-c, 3-a

Matt Singer is the CEO of Forward Montana, dedicated to training, mobilizing, and electing a new generation of progressive leaders. Forward Montana is a charter (get it?) organization of the Bus Federation.

On the Op-Ed page today, the New York Times is running a surprisingly information-free look back at "what went wrong" with the Clinton campaign. How bad is it? Apparently, Clinton lost because she is too much like Hermione Granger. Seriously. How bad is it? So bad that Mark Penn and Michael Kinsley offer the best of slim pickings. There was one bright light though.

Buried in the 10th paragraph of an 11 graph piece (the most column inches of any contributor), in which he argues that it's not his fault, Mark Penn says this:

Are there a lot of other things the campaign could have done differently? Of course. We should have taken on Mr. Obama more directly and much earlier, and we needed a different kind of operation to win caucuses and to retain the support of superdelegates. From more aggressively courting young people earlier to mobilizing the full power of women, there are things that could have been done differently.

Emphasis is mine. This is a far cry from Mark Penn at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner:

At least two of Hillary Clinton’s upper-echelon advisers, Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn, were decidedly unimpressed .

“Our people look like caucus-goers,” Grunwald said, “and his people look like they are 18. Penn said they look like Facebook.”

Penn added, “Only a few of their people look like they could vote in any state.”

While the importance of young voters as a Democratic constituency is far from the only lesson to be gleaned from this primary campaign, it is an important one. Young Voters in Iowa were subjected to major outreach from the Obama campaign and from outside partisan and nonpartisan organizations including (but not limited to) the Young Voter PAC, Rock the Vote, the Young Democrats, and the Student PIRGs. As a result, they overperformed their share of the electorate and came out in equal numbers to the "reliable" senior demographic. That was the beginning of the end for Clinton.

Here's to hoping that other Democratic candidates down the ballot learn that lesson. And here's to hoping that they know that there are many resources available to their campaigns to help learn how to reach that audience. From live-blogging here at Future Majority, to working with organizations like Young Voter PAC and Rock the Vote, or local youth orgs that may be organizing in their state. Reaching young voters is not rocket science, and there are many folks willing to help you do it.

In conversation, the President of one of YDA's state chapters raised a really interesting question: What would happen if campaigns stopped putting money into the senior vote and redirected that to youth?

It's a provocative question. Campaigns tend to spend no money on young people "because youth don't vote," and they expend a large share of resources reaching out to the "reliable" senior vote. When you think about it, it's a little ass-backwards. Voting is a habit and seniors tend to be full-on addicts in their turnout rates. If we stopped spending money reaching out to them and encouraging them to get to the polls, would they turnout anyway? Probably. It seems highly unlikely they would quite voting cold turkey. Couldn't that money be better spent reaching out to people whose voting habits are not so "reliable" and whose partisanship is still up for grabs?

It's not an all or nothing proposition. You don't need to stop spending ALL money on seniors, but perhaps adjusting the proportion spent on seniors and that spent on young people might yield better returns on investment overall? What would happen if half the money spent robo-calling, direct mailing, and door-knocking seniors went to contacting young people?

Conversely, if we did see a big drop-off in senior turnout under such a campaign, doesn't that speak to the importance of doing outreach to ALL demographics? If less resources and contacts means a smaller senior vote, the same is true of young voters. You can't claim they're unreliable and not worth resources if the very act of withholding resources is what drives down their turnout numbers . . .

It would be interesting to run this as a field experiment in a super-safe Democratic seat. I don't think we will, but it would be a good piece of data to have.

Stuff you should know and see that I won't be blogging in depth:

• Looks like we have another YEO! John Tyler Hammons, a 17 year old freshman at the University of Oklahoma was elected the mayor of Muskegee, a town of 38,000 people. He ran on a good government platform and won in a run-off against the former mayor, capturing 70% of the vote. Way to go John. - The Politico
• Young evangelicals continue to abandon Bush and the GOP over Iraq and the economy. - Huffington Post
• The Godfathers of GOTV testing and research, Gerber and Green, have a new book out pimping Peer to Peer as the best form of organizing. Direct mail and robo-call consultants everywhere are not happy. - Campaigns and Elections
• Two articles say that Obama will need the "senior vote" if he is to beat McCain. I tend not to agree. There are more voters under 30 than over 65, and in some contests we are already performing on par with their turnout. It all depends on how many new young voters show up in November. - Democratic Strategist
• Obama is the king of voter-generated music tributes. - The Politico
• Republicans held a fashion show on the National Mall to show off their new convention swag. This was my favorite photo. And no, this is not a joke. - Minnesota Monitor

Who at the GOP thought it was a good idea to bring back MC Hammer pants? And I'm pretty sure that if that little girl were a lib'rul, we'd hear wingnuts screaming about flag desecration.

Update: Welcome TechPresident readers. When you're done here, do also check out Colin Delaney's thoughts on the study over at ePolitics.
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I get really, really annoyed when I get text messages from Barack Obama et al (even though I signed up for them), but it turns out that text messaging actually works as a GOTV tool.

A new study by Working Assets and the Student PIRGS confirms that text message GOTV can increase the youth vote by 4-5%. It's still no replacement for peer to peer contact, but it is sure as hell a lot cheaper.

Here are the major findings of the study:

• Across the board, text message reminders increased the likelihood of an individual voting by 4.2 percentage points.
• Of the different messages tested, a short, to-the-point reminder was most effective, with a boost of nearly 5 percentage points.
• In a follow up survey, 59% of recipients reported that the reminder was helpful, versus only 23% who found it bothersome.
• Hispanics had especially positive feelings about the reminders.
• At just $1.56 per additional vote generated, text messaging was extremely cost effective.

I wonder what it means, exactly, that Hispanics had especially positive feelings. Was their turnout rate even higher? That would make sense. Text messaging was one of the major organizing tools for Hispanic youth during last year's immigration marches. It would be good to see some actual figures, but the link to the full study isn't working properly at the moment.

The link to the full study is now live. See Chris Kennedy's comment below re: the question of Hispanic turnout and receptiveness.

I guess it's time I revisited my previous statements about text messaging as a GOTV tool.

I just got this in the mail from Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan youth voter registration outfit:

We know what some of you might be thinking...

Youth voting campaigns seem like a dime a dozen. Start with an election cycle. Add equal parts celebrity, earnestness and cool T-shirts. Just add water ... and stir it up.

Not this time. Not this year.

The growing list of stars, athletes and artists we've brought together is unprecedented in the history of our country. The best part? Each one of them wants to do something special, something major, something unforgettable to get every 18-year-old to register and vote in the 2008 presidential election.

We can't wait to see what they come up with. Can you?

See which celebrities and influencers are powered up to get you to register and vote.

Check out www.DeclareYourself.com.

So let me get this straight:

• Youth campaigns are a dime a dozen? Way to denigrate the efforts of thousands of other people in your field and all of their hard work. This is not a zero-sum competition to see who can register the most voters. Everyone should be working together.
• Other youth campaigns suck because they use celebrities and witty slogans, but our campaign is super cool because we have the most celebrities? Awesome message. You should vote because we have more famous people telling you to do shit than the other guy.
  
  I've never been a believer in the idea that young people vote because celebrities tell them too. They vote because celebrities create a change within a cultural community. They open a space whereby participation becomes acceptable where once it wasn't. It's a subtle but important difference. It's the line between condescension and respect. It's also the difference between a broadcast strategy that talks at people, and a more peer-to-peer strategy that recognizes the celebrity as a catalyst for a much longer process that culminates in politicization and participation. Declare Yourself's message here is on the wrong side of that line.
• And what exactly is the message here? Oh yeah - it's "I'm writing to tell you that eventually celebrities are going to tell you to vote. And the way they do it will blow your mind." That is a useless message. I can't do anything with that. You just cluttered my inbox and didn't even ask me to register to vote or tell my friends to register, ostensibly the purpose of your organization.

I'm a big fan of the PSAs that Declare Yourself put together a few weeks ago. They were a step in the right direction in terms of tone and content. This email was a step backwards in the wrong direction.

Sidenote: Apparently Ivanka Trump is in the running to be one of the moderators for the MySpace debates. Folks at Declare Yourself, you are partners with MySpace. If this is true, please do everything in your power to prevent this.

Just a quick wiki update. I made Campus Organizing a major category (top level), and added a new article: Building a Voter File with FaceBook. Check it out. Give it an edit if you see something missing or wrong.

Couple interesting, but small items in the news this morning.

Grammercy Communications, an Albany-based PR firm, is offering $1000 in prizes for anyone who can produce a youth-targeted, potentially viral GOTV video:

A $500 first place prize will be accompanied by up to five $100 prizes for honorable mentions. The video should be under 30 seconds in length, be non-partisan and not mention any specific candidate or interest group, and have a generally positive tone. Creativity and humor that appeals to young people is encouraged. Questions about detailed submission guidelines should be directed via e-mail to GOTV@GramercyCommunications.com. The deadline for submissions is Friday, October 27, 2006.

HeadCount, the all-volunteer, artist run GOTV organization for the jamband community announced that it had met it's goal of registering 5000 new voters for the midterms. The group accomplished this with no paid staff on a budget of $25,000, provided mostly by Dave Matthews Band and Relix Magazine.

UPDATE: Also check out this MyDD diary by Ben Waxman of For Our Future about the lack of media training programs for young progressives.