A Voter Turnout Motivation Study

The Frustrations Of
Getting Out The Vote
Getting Started In 2007 I volunteered
to become a precinct captain in Palm
Beach Countys Precinct 4178. I learned
about knocking on doors. I learned
about making phone calls. I learned
how to use the database of registered
voterscalled the VAN (Voter Activation
Network). Using the database for my
precinct I learned whose phone number
was available to me. I also learned whose
email address was available to me. And
I learned how to make lists of all of this
information.
Finding Volunteers I assembled a
team of volunteers. As you may know,
volunteers are not easy to find. After
much effort, I was able to find 15
volunteers to cover the 714 Democrats in
my precinct. We were instructed not to
bother to try to reach out to the 533
registered as NPA (no major party
affiliation).

Volunteer Teams I divided my

volunteers into teams covering about 3070 voters each. With a list I gave them,
1

their job was to contact each voter before

each election by phone and/or by knocking
on doors to give them information about
the coming election and to urge them to
vote. When they reached someone, it was
unusual for them to have five minutes
with them.
Contact Rate: 25% My volunteers
found they had a succcessful campaign
if they were able to speak to 25% of their
lists. That means 75% of their phone calls
either did not answer or went to voice
mail. That means that 75% of their door
knocking found no one home.
The Norm In talking with many of my
precinct leader colleagues, 25% appears
to represent the norm! In my precinct,
out of 744 Democrats my volunteers
were unable to give our message to 588
of themnot an efficient use of their time
and energy.

The Frustrations Of Trying

To Reach Out To All The
Voters In Your County.
Precincts Covered Then I discovered how
few of Palm Beach Countys 850 precincts had
volunteer precinct leaders. I was appalled. Of
Palm Beach Countys 850 precincts, the
Democratic Party had only 350 active volunteer
precinct leaders.

Thats like Walmart having just a few stores

and actively selling local residents their wares.
Walmart did not become the powerhouse it is by
keeping 350 stores with few customers. They did
a lot better by having 850 storespacked with
customers.
Why Ignore Our Customers? So, I said
to myself, why are we ignoring 75% of our
customers? Why do we think were doing a great
job if our store in Precinct 4178 is attracting only
25% of its possible customers. I decided to see if
there were a better way.
A New Approach
Rather than touching 178 voters in my precinct I
decided to create a newsletter which would
contact all 714 Democrats. Not only that, I
decided to also reach out to the 533 NPAs as well.
That meant that instead of touching 178 potential
voters I would be touching 1247!

Volunteers Needed For 350 Precincts If

each of the 350 precincts needed 15 volunteers
(as mine did) to do the job, that means over
5,000 volunteers had to be found! And not one
of the uncovered 500 still had a single volunteer!
No Representation That meant that 500
precincts got no personal representation at all
no phone calling or door knockingfrom a local
volunteer. True, calls were made from a central
boiler room, but this type of contact was seldom
effective. Often it turned off the recipient more
than turned them on.
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18 Times Per Year And instead of touching

178 potential voters for perhaps five minutes,
three times a year between Municipal, Primary,
and State/National elections, I would touch 1247
potential voters 18 times per year.

18 Monthly Newsletters I created a

monthly 8-page newsletter (12 issues) plus an
extra two issues in the month before each
election, for a total of 18. Realistically expecting
the average reader to spend at least 10 minutes
looking at each issue, instead of a voter contact
of about 890 minutes the traditional way, I
would be contacting potential voters 249,400
minutes!

The results of the

experiment were
beyond my expectations. The turnout in precinct
4178 was between
19% and 71% greater than the County
precinct averages.
Here is the graphic comparison for
the August Primary
election:

To test my idea, in 2014 I arranged to send 18

issues to every one of the Democratic and NPA
prospective voters in my precinct by email or by
mail.

Common Wisdom Not Wisdom Now common wisdom says

that no one reads any more. No one will read an
8-page newsletter, 18 times. How do they explain
the 71% improved voting turnout of the non-readers of the newsletter they receivedand supposedly didnt readcompared to the non-readers of
the newsletter who actually didnt receive it?

Below is the graphic comparison for all the

elections in 2014 (*VBM - Vote By Mail).

Of special note is the turnout for the August 2014

15th Circuit Judge VBM. How can that 1233%
advantage be explained?
Its well known that down-ballot choices are
often left blank. Voters will select from the
top few choices which they know something
about. They skip the rest because they dont
feel knowledgable enough to make a selection.
The readers of The Enlightened Voter had been
informed about who was running in advance
and about their backgrounds. Voters were told
of how the election of a judge could affect their
who was selected to be a judge could affect
them personally. The 1233% definitely had
something to to with voter education!

Where Do We Go From Here?

As of January 1, 2015, we have established a not-for-profit corporation in Florida: The Voter
Publications, Inc, also DBA Voter Education, Inc.

1.

Our Mission

Create the necessary nationwide framework to

increase voter turnout by up to 70% by placing a copy of
The Enlightened Voter:
Into every voters hands.
Do it every month, and
Assure higher voter turnout in every election.

2.
3.

To educate and share with . . .

Precincts,
Counties, and
States.
To consult and train . . .
Precincts,
Counties, and
States

. . . to master voter trust and education skills.

You may find out more by visiting our website www.votereducation.net
We already have created the structure to accomplish all the goals in our Mission:
We have included a rationale to motivate using a voter education newsletter in addition toor
in preference tousing door-knockers and phone callers.
We have Spanish and Creole translators ready to go.
We have training materials to guide County workers to adapt The Enlightened Voter - Palm
Beach County Edition for their counties already available on our website.
We have shared a job description for the volunteers and skills needed to accomplish the tasks
(visit our website to view them).
We have a method to harvest many thousands of email addresses
And the number of volunteers needed to educate all the voters in a county is less than 20 as compared
to the thousands of volunteers needed for door-knocking and phone-calling.
We now need the Seed Money for a staff to implement that structure.