What will help the US democracy most is for people who don't vote....to vote. But how best to nudge them? And what doesn't work? I have thoughts. And experience.
There is a big, powerful, expensive campaign complex in the United States that is in charge of how we conduct and even understand elections. Filled with sports and war metaphors, it sees elections as a collection of candidate races and campaigns that take place in cycles every two years. Elections that take place off cycle are largely ignored. This complex includes the media that overwhelmingly focuses on the "horse race" and a preoccupation with candidate approval polling in the months before a "cycle"
This way of understanding and portraying the fundamental nature of elections makes sense for people who are very preoccupied with the results or who are professionally involved in them. But it is quite different from how most people can or do understand elections. This first group, the campaign complex, predictably, is highly partisan and is extremely focused on the outcome of individual candidate races which it sees as the fundamental organizing unit of those elections.
But this is not how most people see elections. Many don't understand the consequences and therefore the importance of outcomes on their lives. Others do but are busy, or less organized, or confused or even nervous about the process. Some are turned off by partisan politics.
At the same time, very many individuals who are very focused on on the outcomes of elections, who tend to be disciplined voters, who worry about and are ready to work for American democracy, are largely ignored by the Campaign Campaign. For most of the "cycle" their data is harvested, they are asked for endless contributions, and the only thing for them to actually do, is to volunteer for individual candidate campaigns to staff call banks or stuff envelopes, or to be left with other manufactured activity that statistically doesn't do much and is often quite soul destroying. They are given no responsibility. And when the election is over, just like those who voted, they are abandoned by their campaign until the next even year October....except for the fundraising texts and emails.
There is a different way. The Captain Method recruits people who most want to support US democracy over the long term. It helps those voting captains choose ten close contacts; friends, neighbors, classmates, coworkers, family members, who they can help vote in each and every election. It matches their ten voters to the voter registration list and will let them know if those voters voted or not. It is non-partisan, people already know how how their close contacts will vote, the important thing is to get them to vote, not push this or that candidate in this or that race. This help and encouragement of ten voters becomes a habit the Captain and voting becomes a habit of their voters.
The Captain Method increases turnout more effectively than any other method because it meets voters where they are, and looks at voting the way people do, as a habit. Here is where I write about that method, what it means, how it works, and what we have learned.
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