[GOTV] postcarding again
Dec. 12th, 2024 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hermionesviolinWhen my partner early voted this general election and posted a selfie, they said:
I feel like every year, the presidential election galvanizes people, but people often don't find out about stuff until it's too late for them to get involved and/or people's energy doesn't carry through the rest of the year.
I got really into GOTV postcarding this season, and closer to the election I started writing up about the postcarding I'd done with different orgs. And then election results came in and I did not feel enthused about evangelizing this work to people. But postcard campaigns for runoff/special elections have started, and I continue to like writing GOTV postcards as a way to potentially make a difference.
This year I wrote GOTV postcards with both Postcards to Swing States (A Progressive Turnout Project Initiative) and Reclaim Our Vote (Center for Common Ground). (I learned about the latter from a![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisfinecrew post about a number of postcarding and letter-writing options.)
Postcards to Swing States is very low barrier to entry -- they send you postcards (and address lists) for free, along with a few pre-tested messages for you to choose from; you just have to write and address the postcards, buy and apply postcard stamps, and mail them. The default is sets of 200, but you can also order in increments of 25 (the address lists are 25/page).
I believe they target infrequent Democrat voters in swing states and competitive House districts.
ROV does outreach to Black voters in the South (including Texas and Arizona). You have to buy their postcards -- though they're significantly discounted, like $10/50 (and the per unit price is lower the more you buy -- I was ordering 100 for $15 -- and the designs don't have the election date on them, so you can reuse them in future) -- and also be able to print Avery labels (so buy the labels and have access to a printer to print them). They also suggest that you use colored pens and/or highlighters to help accent the postcards. (Like, write in different colors, do some highlighting...)
I did Postcards to Swing States first and then signed up for ROV after I had finished those.
I really liked the flexibility of being able to request as many (or as few) addresses as I wanted through the online portal. (Because the Avery labels were 30/sheet, I printed a bunch of label sheets and requested 30 addresses at a time. What you print on the Avery labels is information about where to find their polling place, where to find information about what's on their ballot, etc. -- provided by ROV.)
They also do primary elections, runoff elections, etc. -- not just the presidential election.
I had written in my draft of this post: "Postcards to Swing States times theirs so they arrive soon before the election -- which makes sense, but ROV encourages early voting (in states where that's possible), to avoid long lines, etc."
But on Oct 15 I got an email ("Postcard Mailing Dates") from Postcards to Swing States that said, "Please follow the mailing date on the instructions and voter list that came with your specific batch of postcards! With the exception of Florida and Texas, every target household will receive three postcards. The mailing dates are staggered so that the postcards will have the largest impact." and those dates were Oct 11/15/17 (depending on state), Oct 24, and Oct 26-29. So they could have included early voting info in that first batch, but I had some postcards to be mailed Oct 15 and the messaging was the same as on all the other ones, no mention of early voting. :(
I think ROV is the org I most appreciate writing for -- it feels really impactful.
Postcards to Swing States is definitely the lowest barrier-to-entry one.
Tues Dec 10, I got an email from Postcards to Swing States that included, "Here's a preview of what we'll share on the December 19 webinar: [...] Some of our early plans for postcard campaigns beginning almost immediately"
I am not interested in attending the webinar, but I look forward to hearing about the postcarding. I then looked up Postcards to Voters' Current and they're doing postcards for a VA special election Jan 7 [Kannan Srinivasan, VA, Senate District 32 -- I Googled for more information and got e.g. this], so I made myself a Todoist to sign up for postcards for that.
Mon Nov 25 I had emailed PtV to become an approved postcard writer (the previous week, a friend posted in a Discord that they were doing a campaign about a supreme court runoff in Mississippi, and I didn't have any postcards at the time, but I ordered some from their Etsy shop [currently on break until the week of Dec 15] so I'd have some for the next campaign the org ran, and emailed the day they arrived to become an approved postcard writer) and successfully got approved, but it seemed like I hadn't gotten on their email list -- even though I thought I had signed up after my friend posted in the Discord, and my approval email said, "When we restart with important runoff and special elections, we will send an email from Tony the Democrat."
But (according to their FB) apparently they had only started releasing addresses Tuesday morning (and had posted the campaign script Monday morning, so people could start writing postcards even before they had addresses), so I wasn't particularly behind. [And I did get an email the morning of Thurs Dec 12 announcing the new campaign and encouraging me to sign up for addresses.]
I knew going in that Postcards to Voters wants you to write and send your postcards within 3 days of getting addresses. So I guess it's unsurprising that they limit how many addresses you can get at a time, but I was still surprised to see in the address request portal: "Select the number of addresses (4-50) you can write and mail within the next 3 days."
I appreciate that the messaging for this campaign encourages early voting.
Huh:
This isn’t the last time, right? /r
To be fair, I’m confident I’ll vote again. Autocracy regularly wraps itself in a shroud of false democracy.
I feel like every year, the presidential election galvanizes people, but people often don't find out about stuff until it's too late for them to get involved and/or people's energy doesn't carry through the rest of the year.
I got really into GOTV postcarding this season, and closer to the election I started writing up about the postcarding I'd done with different orgs. And then election results came in and I did not feel enthused about evangelizing this work to people. But postcard campaigns for runoff/special elections have started, and I continue to like writing GOTV postcards as a way to potentially make a difference.
This year I wrote GOTV postcards with both Postcards to Swing States (A Progressive Turnout Project Initiative) and Reclaim Our Vote (Center for Common Ground). (I learned about the latter from a
thisfinecrew post about a number of postcarding and letter-writing options.)Postcards to Swing States is very low barrier to entry -- they send you postcards (and address lists) for free, along with a few pre-tested messages for you to choose from; you just have to write and address the postcards, buy and apply postcard stamps, and mail them. The default is sets of 200, but you can also order in increments of 25 (the address lists are 25/page).
I believe they target infrequent Democrat voters in swing states and competitive House districts.
ROV does outreach to Black voters in the South (including Texas and Arizona). You have to buy their postcards -- though they're significantly discounted, like $10/50 (and the per unit price is lower the more you buy -- I was ordering 100 for $15 -- and the designs don't have the election date on them, so you can reuse them in future) -- and also be able to print Avery labels (so buy the labels and have access to a printer to print them). They also suggest that you use colored pens and/or highlighters to help accent the postcards. (Like, write in different colors, do some highlighting...)
I did Postcards to Swing States first and then signed up for ROV after I had finished those.
I really liked the flexibility of being able to request as many (or as few) addresses as I wanted through the online portal. (Because the Avery labels were 30/sheet, I printed a bunch of label sheets and requested 30 addresses at a time. What you print on the Avery labels is information about where to find their polling place, where to find information about what's on their ballot, etc. -- provided by ROV.)
They also do primary elections, runoff elections, etc. -- not just the presidential election.
I had written in my draft of this post: "Postcards to Swing States times theirs so they arrive soon before the election -- which makes sense, but ROV encourages early voting (in states where that's possible), to avoid long lines, etc."
But on Oct 15 I got an email ("Postcard Mailing Dates") from Postcards to Swing States that said, "Please follow the mailing date on the instructions and voter list that came with your specific batch of postcards! With the exception of Florida and Texas, every target household will receive three postcards. The mailing dates are staggered so that the postcards will have the largest impact." and those dates were Oct 11/15/17 (depending on state), Oct 24, and Oct 26-29. So they could have included early voting info in that first batch, but I had some postcards to be mailed Oct 15 and the messaging was the same as on all the other ones, no mention of early voting. :(
I think ROV is the org I most appreciate writing for -- it feels really impactful.
Postcards to Swing States is definitely the lowest barrier-to-entry one.
Tues Dec 10, I got an email from Postcards to Swing States that included, "Here's a preview of what we'll share on the December 19 webinar: [...] Some of our early plans for postcard campaigns beginning almost immediately"
I am not interested in attending the webinar, but I look forward to hearing about the postcarding. I then looked up Postcards to Voters' Current and they're doing postcards for a VA special election Jan 7 [Kannan Srinivasan, VA, Senate District 32 -- I Googled for more information and got e.g. this], so I made myself a Todoist to sign up for postcards for that.
Mon Nov 25 I had emailed PtV to become an approved postcard writer (the previous week, a friend posted in a Discord that they were doing a campaign about a supreme court runoff in Mississippi, and I didn't have any postcards at the time, but I ordered some from their Etsy shop [currently on break until the week of Dec 15] so I'd have some for the next campaign the org ran, and emailed the day they arrived to become an approved postcard writer) and successfully got approved, but it seemed like I hadn't gotten on their email list -- even though I thought I had signed up after my friend posted in the Discord, and my approval email said, "When we restart with important runoff and special elections, we will send an email from Tony the Democrat."
But (according to their FB) apparently they had only started releasing addresses Tuesday morning (and had posted the campaign script Monday morning, so people could start writing postcards even before they had addresses), so I wasn't particularly behind. [And I did get an email the morning of Thurs Dec 12 announcing the new campaign and encouraging me to sign up for addresses.]
I knew going in that Postcards to Voters wants you to write and send your postcards within 3 days of getting addresses. So I guess it's unsurprising that they limit how many addresses you can get at a time, but I was still surprised to see in the address request portal: "Select the number of addresses (4-50) you can write and mail within the next 3 days."
I appreciate that the messaging for this campaign encourages early voting.
Huh:
We do not provide the voters' names for a variety of reasons and it is a best practice we've followed since 2017. Please pick ONE of these or something similarly neutral/positive/encouraging to write as the first line of the address:
Freedom Voter, Important Voter, VIP Voter, Best Voter Ever, Valued Voter, Essential Voter, Esteemed Voter, Much-Needed Voter, Partner in Democracy, Voter Friend, Terrific Voter, Awesome Voter, Patriotic Voter, Concerned Citizen, Defender of Democracy, Super Voter, Serious Voter, Responsible Voter, Winning Voter, Nebraska Voter (or whatever state you're writing)