How to Encourage Voter Turnout for the 2020 Elections

A friend sent over a great initiative to participate in to encourage voter turnout in this year’s elections. Aside from taking part in phone banks, letter writing campaigns are another viable and effective method to reach voters. VoteForward is working with SwingLeft to "increase civic participation by sending letters to voters”.

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Surpassing their goal to have 10 million letters written, the campaign has amassed over 15 million letters. Sending letters is super easy to do; Vote Forward conducted “a randomized controlled trial in the special election for U.S. Senate in Alabama in 2017, turnout among letter recipients was 3.9 percentage points higher than turnout in the control group. (3.4 percentage points after controlling for gender, age, and other factors). This is big! It appears to be one of the most effective known tactics to boost turnout.” This grassroots organization also “wrote more than four thousand letters to infrequent voters to boost turnout in the OH-12 special election on August 7. Our best estimate is that letters boosted turnout in this race by 1.44 percentage points — not as shockingly large as the effect we saw in Alabama, but still substantial, especially given the very high baseline turnout.”

Participating is extremely easy - all you have to do is sign up, print the letters, complete the letters with a blue point pen, place letters in #10 self addressed envelopes, add stamp and mail out by October 17th. For more FAQs and info, visit their knowledge hub. For other ways to volunteer or join/host virtual events, visit Swing Left.

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ABOUT VOTE FORWARD

Vote Forward is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. Our mission is to empower grassroots volunteers to help register voters from under-represented demographics and encourage them to vote. We build tools to enable Americans, wherever they may be, to encourage fellow citizens to participate in our democracy.

The project began as an experiment conducted by Scott Forman () in Alabama in 2017. Encouraged by the success of that test, Scott and a small group of friends and fellow Opower alumni built this platform to empower volunteers to take easy and effective action. We believe our democracy depends on everyone participating, so we volunteered our time and expertise to achieve that goal.

Social Issues, Activism, Non ProfitAmanda N Hammondvote, voting, voter, women voters, women vote, vote forward, swing left, 2020 election, 2020 elections, us elections, us voter, american voter, american vote, united states of america, voting in the U.S., voting in the united states, voting in america, voting in the united states of america, voter turnout, voting campaigns, letter to voters, swing states, battleground states, voter encouragement, lifestyle, activism, social activism, civic rights, civic duties, exercise your right, right to vote, civic responsibilities, organization, organizations, grassroots, grassroots organization, non profit, non profits, non profit organizationComment