Get Out the Vote in 2020

With it increasingly likely that the 2020 Presidential election will be a “Trump” / “Not Trump” vote, the real battle will be turnout — what campaigns call “Get Out the Vote” or GOTV. This is said so often that it’s probably obvious to you, but I want to describe what a COVID GOTV campaign might look like.

The core of traditional GOTV campaigns are “walk lists” that volunteers use to visit individual voters.

Sample Walk List for a single street in a precinct (source: https://www.politicaldata.com/)

The list is sorted by house and lists all registered voters in the home. The idea is for the door-to-door volunteer to contact the voter, have a brief conversation about whether they are planning to vote and can your candidate count on their support and then indicate that by circling a response code — Y supports your candidate, N does not, U is undecided. Most campaigns consider this door-to-door individual voter contact indispensable:

• Talking to voters 1:1 is the most effective way of learning what they’re thinking, what issues they care about, and offering a personal endorsement of your candidate
• Understanding which voters have decided not to vote or to vote for the other candidate helps target the work on election day on those identified as supporting your candidate.
• Helping to connect voters with resources like a way to register a new voter in the house (e.g. a college student home from school) or to get a mail-in ballot is helpful.

Door-to-Door and the Pandemic

It seems really unlikely that a traditional door-to-door voter canvass will be possible this summer and fall. Campaigns can’t count on that — so what do they do?

I believe they should do a virtual door-to-door canvass. Here’s how it would work:

• The Biden campaign targets ~25,000 precincts for virtual canvassing, focusing on key battleground states but also states where Senate races could tip — that likely adds Georgia, Colorado and Arizona to the list of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Florida. (There are about 175,000 precincts in the US — but many are very likely going to vote one way or the other and so canvassing is unlikely to move the needle).
• For each precinct, 2–3 volunteers are recruited to “adopt” the precinct. That’s a massive volunteer effort — 75,000 volunteers. But Sanders had 1,000,000 signed up volunteers in April of last year. Other groups that have ready-made lists of volunteers include MoveOn, Indivisible and labor unions.
• The start of the effort is personal, hand-written notes to the voters in the precinct from the volunteers. Ideally, these would go out in June and July and serve as an introduction. Because the envelopes are hand-written, they are more likely to be open and read by recipients. Inside should be a short hand-written note from the volunteer explaining that they are reaching out to make sure you will pledge to vote in November 2020.

Indivisible Groups have been writing postcards to voters for years (source: https://indivisiblecolusa.org/write-postcards-to-voters)

• Note that we aren’t yet asking people who they are voting for. We’re just giving them information about the election — how to apply for a mail-in ballot in their state, for instance, and maybe a I PLEDGE TO VOTE 2020 sticker they can put on their door or car.
• There also should be a return postcard addressed to the volunteer (not a campaign office — we’re trying to build a personal relationship here) where the voter can ask for more information, indicate the issues they are the most involved in, etc. The voter could also optionally provide a cell number where they can be reached for text messages to remind them to vote.
• This data received by the volunteer is then entered into the campaign system, building up a database like the one a good door-to-door GOTV effort would generate.
• A few weeks later, say around Labor Day, another hand-written mailing goes out. This might include information on issues the people have identified as interesting to them (if they did) or general campaign backgrounder. Again, people have the opportunity to return a card. This might also remind them of the deadline for requesting a mail-in ballot in their state and directions on how to do it, and provide information on deadlines for voter registration. Since the Census 2020 deadline has extended to October, this is also a good time to remind folks to take the census if they haven’t.
• In early October, another mailing goes out. If there are people who’ve returned a cell number (or we’ve obtained cell numbers in other ways), text messages could go now from the person who’s been sending the personal snail mail, building on that connection.
• A final mailing goes out about 10 days before the election (to allow for any mail delays) with up-to-date polling information, hours, any info on early voting, etc.

There is time for the Biden campaign to organize this and it’s a great way to involve Sanders volunteers and other groups. It’s a targeted effort focusing on precincts that we’d like to walk door-to-door but know we probably won’t be able to. It could provide the winning margin in 2020.