Hi. I’m Tony The Democrat. In March 2017, I emailed a few voters’ addresses along with a version of my volunteer phone script to complete strangers I’d met on Facebook who said they’d write postcards reminding voters of the Special Election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District where I live. Four weeks later, there were 1,200+ volunteers writing to over 51,000 households.
Fast forward to the 32 midterm election campaigns just concluded. Our 24 volunteer Rapid Response Email Team members and Abby the Address Bot assigned 1,962,204 voter addresses in CA, CT, FL, GA, MO, ND, NE, NH, NY, OH, OR, TN, and TX.
Prospective volunteers, candidates, campaign staff, consultants, party insiders, other activists, new reporters, podcasters, and even a few of my neighbors have — at one time or another — mentioned one of the following myths about postcarding to boost voter turnout. If you don’t mind, I’d like to address them all here so that I can have a handy link to copy and paste going forward. Sure will save me some time. (Smile.)
”Postcarding voters is new and untested.” False. There is plenty of historical evidence showing postcards were used to encourage voter registration and election turnout going back to (at least) 1952 (see photo). I have had a volunteer tell me that they wrote postcards to voters in a church basement during the Civil Rights movement. Direct mailers and campaign mail houses would not have sent 121.2 billion pieces of mail if they didn’t think there was a meaningful role in their overall marketing/GOTV plan.
”Volunteers won’t follow instructions or they will make mistakes.” And? Volunteers who phone bank, text bank, and canvass are prone to the same human behaviors that might lead a small number of them to ignore or improvise on instructions. Some volunteers will sometimes make mistakes. There is nothing about phone banking, text banking, or going door to door that suddenly imbues volunteers with a greater sense of obedience to their training or makes them flawless as they conduct themselves. At least when someone is writing a postcard, they have ample opportunity to notice a misspelling or something else they got wrong and they can fix it before they mail it to the voter. Say something wrong over the phone, by text, or to a voter at their door, and the damage is done even if you catch yourself. We have found that the volunteers writing take extra care to be accurate and to follow instructions because they know their card could end up on social media or the address might belong to the candidate or their staff or even a member of the news media. I think it’s less likely that someone who takes pride in the card they’re writing so that it makes a positive mailbox impression is going to make a mistake than someone who is speaking (perhaps distractedly) by phone, texting (with the curse of autocorrect), and at a voter’s door (stumped by an unexpected comment or question).
”No one is going to read them.” Not true. Recipients have been seen posting photos of their postcards on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. There are even a couple blog posts by voter/recipients so impressed by the grassroots effort. Campaigns give us positive feedback all the time of canvassed voters bringing their saved postcard to the door to show them off. We’ve heard about voters carrying their postcards with them to campaign events and polling places. We even received emails, Facebook messages, and Tweets from voters thanking us. They’re fully-handwritten messages and addresses which right away catch the eye. They are regular-sized postcards which don’t come in anonymous, mysterious envelopes that need to be opened. Positively-worded messages to an audience of voters already predisposed to vote Democrat are well-received. And read. Even saved and shared. Search for #PTVInTheWild for examples of such.
”It will backfire because they’re being mailed from out-of-state.” Not so. We only write to Democrats (or, in states that do not have party registration, to voters whose primary voting history and other industry-accepted ways to score likely voter partisanship demonstrate they are friendly Democrats) and there is no controversy for a Democrat anywhere to write to another Democrat somewhere else reminding them about an election where there is only one Democrat on the ballot. We aren’t writing candidate persuasion messages. It’s a straight-forward GOTV reminder to people already on our side. Out of over 4 million postcards for 137 campaigns, we’ve not received a single complaint from a Democrat. Not one. In today’s viral social media culture, if there was a Democrat out there unhappy for *any* reason to be reminded to vote for a Democrat, you can be sure it would be well-circulated and shared by our critics. It is the biggest myth of them all that out-of-state support will cause a Democratic-leaning voter to stay home or vote for the Republican. If this were true, they’d stop asking us to phone bank, text bank, and travel to canvass from out of state. They’d no longer ask for our money if we didn’t live in their district. (And, you can’t complain that people won’t read them and also claim that they will resent them from coming from another state. — grin)
”They won’t make enough of a difference.” On its own, I’d agree. If a campaign isn’t working their field plan and there’s not a comprehensive GOTV plan to win, then postcards by themselves is not going to be a miracle solution. But, in combination with a winning plan that is getting worked by the campaign daily, postcards can boost turnout by between 1-4% based on a number of studies. It can certainly vary based on the size of the voter universe, how much money is being spent on other voter outreach (TV and radio ads, internet, billboards, glossy mailers, etc.), length of time to vote, and other factors that make each election unique like the candidates themselves. If you look at our results page, you will see many Trump districts that the Democrat won. In some cases, they won with 39, 95, and 105 votes out of tens of thousands. You draw the same conclusion about the effect of postcards as you can with phone calls, texts, and other GOTV approaches.
One final thought, if postcards weren’t any good, we wouldn’t have had over 600 campaigns sign up in the months leading up to the last election. Republicans wouldn’t be wringing their hands to whine about it. And there wouldn’t be an ever-increasing number of pop-up postcarding with groups and campaigns coast to coast. You can probably name 5 other volunteer efforts writing voters by snail mail that have hit the radar in the last few months.
Because it works.
If you’re on board or if you want to see how it is in practice, we’re in the middle of a new postcarding campaign in support of Mike Espy in Mississippi. Their Special Election for U.S. Senate has a November 27th Runoff. You can sign up by texting JOIN to (484) 275-2229 or, if you cannot text, email us at Join@TonyTheDemocrat.org
If you’re new to us, you’ll be given instructions to write a practice postcard and email us a digital photo of it to become approved. All approved writers can get addresses conveniently via self-serve from Abby the Address Bot. She texts and also has her own Facebook Page where she can give you addresses via Messenger.
Thanks for keeping an open mind about this authentic way for volunteers to connect with voters in a creative way that is positive, fun, and friendly. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Write on!
