Last year we introduced our collaboration with TurboVote to encourage the community to register to vote, pledge to vote, and then record the impact their vote had. Now it’s your turn! As a community of leaders who are inspired by the impacts we collectively create, it’s our duty to inspire everyone to exercise their right to vote and promote civic engagement! But how do we start engaging our community to seek out civic education and vote early? There are many ways to help you mobilize your community! In honor of Vote Early Day on October 23, we put together a few tips and ideas for how you can encourage voter participation in your own backyard.
Create a Community Registration Drive + Pledge
Create a registration drive to activate your community to register to vote. Research your state’s registration requirements; if your state allows online registrations, provide tablets, computers, or smartphones where members of your community can register to vote online! If your state requires mail-in registrations, provide all of the forms and information in multiple languages to make registration accessible for everyone.
Next, create a pledge event on GivePulse where your community can pledge to vote in the next city, state, and national elections. Pledge events remind your community when it’s time to vote, while also providing them with an opportunity to submit a reflection about the process as a whole.
Eligible voters who do not have transportation to the next election are considered the most vulnerable population of each community. Use this opportunity to assess community needs by surveying individuals in the precinct to determine who needs a ride to vote!
Invite Local Political Rockstars
Create a ticketed event and invite prospective, current, and former political candidates to speak to your community about the impact they believe they have had by running for office! Have them explain their campaign journey, from launch to receiving election results. Ask these rising stars to share bills, laws, or policies they wrote and remind your community that they too can create impactful change by voting, and maybe one day running for office! Build excitement around voting for the youngest in your community by showing them how to track their own community impacts and see how their actions can be life changing!
Track Campaigns and their Impact with GivePulse
It’s important for everyone to understand the campaign and election process. What better way to learn and understand than by tracking it in real-time? Create an event that follows a traditional campaign trail, from gathering signatures to include on a ballot to hosting political debates! Have your community track the different milestones of various candidates, and encourage them to reflect on why they think each campaign was successful or not – you never know who you’re encouraging to run in the future!
Encourage Multiple Types of Participation on Election Days
While Voting Day is not a federal holiday, make sure everyone in your community has the resources and access to vote! Provide accessibility and flexibility for your community, encourage early voting, poll your constituents, and find individuals who may need the extra help getting themselves to their precinct. All of these steps will make voting more accessible and ultimately increase turnout.
Create Your Own Elections
Finally, a great way to encourage voting and foster this critical habit in your community is to create your own elections! Share a community-wide election survey so that even the youngest in the crowd can have a simulated experience of voting, and see how their vote has a direct outcome in their community! Share the voting results through graphs and charts to highlight how just one person’s vote can determine who the winner is.
Civic engagement is at the heart of community empowerment. We hope these tips inspire you to participate in the voting process – whether that begins and ends with registering and turning out to vote, or goes beyond that through volunteering to educate, support, and mobilize people in your community to turn out. Don’t hesitate to connect with us to learn how GivePulse can support your voter mobilization efforts and events.