Get out the Vote Campaign Guide

How to Think About Your Get Out the Vote Campaign

The Goal of Voter Mobilization: Change voter behavior

1. Voter persuasion
   1. Targets people who are likely to vote no matter what
   2. Encourages them to think differently about how they vote

                                                              i.      Vote for a particular candidate (partisan)

                                                            ii.      Vote on the basis of a particular set of issues (semi-partisan)

1. Voter Recruitment
   1. Targets people who rarely vote
   2. Encourages them to make the decision to vote.

                                                              i.      Targets people who have been identified as likely to vote in a certain way if they do vote (partisan)

                                                            ii.      Targets a geography based on principles other than voter inclination - past voter participation, proximity to institutions, etc. (non-partisan)

The Problem: How do you change voter behavior?

1. Message
   1. Television/Radio ads
   2. Targeted literature (mailed or door-dropped)
   3. Robotic phone calls
   4. Mass e-mails
   5. Facebook ads
   6. Paid canvasses
   7. Emphasis: quantity of "contacts"
2. Relationships
   1. Person-to-person
   2. Emphasis: quality of contact

The Argument: People are more likely to change their voting behavior if encouraged to do so directly by (in descending order of effectiveness):

1.  A person that they know

2.   A volunteer connected to an institution that they trust

1. A volunteer who is as close to the person in as many dimensions as possible (race, geography, age, experience, etc.)
2. A volunteer who is able to engage the voter in a memorable conversation around his or her interests, and able to connect those interests to voting.  

The Challenge: In today's election industry, message trumps relationship

• Organizing volunteers is hard work that takes time, and cannot be done in just one election cycle - it requires a long term investment that runs in tension with the short term urgency of a particular campaign.
• Candidates and political parties, especially on the left wing of the political spectrum, have found it easier to raise money than to organize the scale of volunteer effort necessary to run a campaign based on the principles of relationship. 
• This has biased campaigns towards spending lots of money in short periods of time on various message mechanisms - thus blitzing a high quantity of "contacts" rather than investing in the development of a smaller number of quality contacts.
• This choice may help win individual elections, but does little to build long-term power.