vote pledges

My apologies for this blog being a little short. I'm at a training thing today - promise to make it up with something more substantial over the weekend!

Kevin has talked about YDA's Pledge to Vote campaign in reflecting on the Peer-to-peer network that is created. There are also a number of similar organizations that are partnering in this effort.

You heard Mike give props to a great registration drive at Bonnaroo with HeadCount where they got 2,000 people to pledge to vote. The Youth Voter Collective is doing a pledge to vote campaign heck even Oprah has a pledge to vote operation, The Human Rights Campaign has also launched a Pledge to Vote campaign, as the famous social justice advocacy group headed by Rev. Jim Wallis, Sojourners has launched a Vote out Poverty campaign asking people to pledge to vote.

But this week Rock the Vote announced their version of it with the Rock the Vote Application on Facebook (must be signed in). This enables folks, in true Facebook Application style, to invite people to join in via FB. This translates to a fantastic GOTV operation where people will get harassed on Facebook (I mean that in a good way).

I'm curious if this application harvests email addresses and personal contact information. I'm thinking that they will send you notes on facebook, potentially text you, and if you say its cool they'll send you emails as well. Which... hey, if you can get your friends to do it, could prove to be significantly helpful.

Also on Facebook, is the Election 2008 Event, that I've seen for the last several months. Someone set up an event and they are trying to get people to say that they are attending the election (aka voting). Such an awesome idea! This too will remind you when the date gets closer! So far 628,035 confirmed guests... damn... If all of those people turn out, plus the people who aren't on facebook, we'll have a nice generational impact. Go team!

Over the weekend Michael wrote about the vote pledge and peer-to-peer program kick-off at the Young Democrats of America conference in Nashville. During the conference there was a lot of excitement about the program and I had great attendance at my trainings on using the internet to collect vote pledges. However, as Michael stated earlier, not everyone is sold on the idea of vote pledges, but I am going to show why they should be.

The concepts of peer-to-peer and vote pledges were developed after extensive research on marketing behavior and social psychology. Social psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini from Arizona State University explains the power of commitment and consistency in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion:

Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.

The process of a young person signing a pledge to vote for a Democrat in November is a commitment to take that action, and they will be much more likely to actually do so in order to be consistent: "Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the stand."

The power of word-of-mouth and peer-to-peer will lead young people to take the commitment of pledging to vote. The ability to use peer influence to encourage action in places where young people live and hangout, both on and off-line, enables the Young Democrats to reach a large number of potential young voters and have them take an action that dramatically increases the likelihood that they will vote in November and that their vote will be for Democrats.

The vote pledge itself provides a great deal of value. The Young Democrats are able to collect the information from those that sign the pledge in order to follow up and remind them of their commitment. With the difficulty finding good contact information for young voters due to increased mobility and exclusive use of cell phones, this data is extremely valuable.

During the YDA Conference state chapters and caucuses set goals for the number of vote pledges that their organizations will collect by the election. Research shows that groups are much more effective when they are seeking a specific goal as opposed to a vague or generic goal. Instead of just having the goal of YDA chapters being the very vague "increase youth turnout," they have a concrete goal of "collect X number of vote pledges." This combined with the strength of commitment and consistency explained earlier will result in a successful coordinated volunteer program across the country with metrics that will allow the organization to judge success.

Sold yet? Go to www.yda.org/votepledge and sign the pledge yourself, and don't forget to spread the word to your own social network encouraging them to do the same.

As I mentioned yesterday, if Day 1 at YDA was all about internal business and caucuses (activities which do, btw, continue throughout the conference), then the second day was all about action. As I've written in the past, YDA is still undergoing a transformation from a networking organization that provided manual labor for state parties and candidates into a chapter-based field organization focused on peer-to-peer GOTV of the often neglected youth vote. Day 2 was all about pushing that peer-to-peer program. Here's Tony Cani, YDA's political director breaking it down:

As Tony explains, the vote pledges - and the establishment of metrics for attaining pledges on the state level - are the focus of the day. The pledge cards - which declare the signatory's intention to vote for a Democrat in the fall, is really just the entry point to a whole series of "touches" - via text message, facebook, phone calls and door-knocks - that end with the person pulling the lever for Obama in the fall. It's also a way for YDA National and YDA chapters to measure their work - providing valuable information about the capabilities of the organization as well as data that can be used for fundraising purposes during the next cycle.

Most of the day is structured around trainings in peer-to-peer- organizing as a way to gather vote pledges. These include community service projects (the Democrats Work model), concerts and festivals (the MFA/Head Count model), campus organizing, online organizing (with a focus on Facebook and state blogs) and more. The day was capped off with a field exercise in which 10 teams competed to gather the most vote pledges as possible - online and on the streets of downtown Nashville - in the span of one hour.

Not everyone was thrilled with this use of YDA time. As I've written before, not all YDA members and chapters are bought-in to the new, peer-to-peer model, and there seemed to be some resistance to the idea of the vote pledges. At the YDA conference I attended in New Hampshire last Novembe, at the YDA Fall Conference, very few attendees participated in the field trainings. Instead, many chose to ditch YDA and canvass for their preferred presidential campaign. This time around participation in field training activities seemed to be on the rise, though still below a majority of conference members. The culture of the organization - who it's members are and how they view YDA's place in Democratic politics - continues to change, but it seems like they're still a ways to go before everyone drinks the peer to peer Kool Aid.