For The Love of All That Is Holy – Please Vote EARLY

You can tell I feel passionately about this, right? And you’re probably not surprised.

But as an organizer who used to work on ballot measure and legislative campaigns for a living, let me take my essay space this week to let you in on a few behind-the-scenes realities for folks who are busy working their tails off between now and Tuesday, November 5 th .

Many campaigns are 2+ years long – fundraising, IDing voters, testing messages, developing working ad campaigns, rallying community support, and showing up at any number of parades, town halls, school fairs, and more. It takes that long (at least) to build an infrastructure that will be big and robust enough to win in a competitive environment (ie. there is active opposition – people campaigning just as hard against your ballot measure and/or candidate).

So, although there are tens of thousands of hours being committed by both paid operatives and volunteers across a span of many months, typically, voters who are NOT news junkies (which is most voters) only start paying attention to an upcoming November election after Labor Day.

I realize that this year is unique for U.S. federal presidential candidates in that Kamala Harris has only been the front runner for the Democratic ticket for a few weeks. Even still, the campaign offices, tasks, and voter contact have already been going on for years, focused on issues that are core to that party’s platform.

Why do I share this with you?

Because it can be helpful to intentionally recognize that there is a whole organizing machine – around the election of judges and sheriffs, around school bonds and tax levies, for and against candidates, parties, and ballot measures.

That is to say, by the time we reach September/October – organizers are TIRED.

Not like, “I stayed up a little too late last night, tired.” In my experience, it’s more of an adrenaline filled no day off til Election Day all out sprint to the finish line that has you living off of Dunkin Donuts drive through, pizza, and the hummus and carrot sticks brought to canvasses and phone banks.

If this is a year where you’ve got energy and motivation to volunteer – by all means. If you’re giving money to the causes and candidates that share your vision for a future – excellent. However you engage this cycle, a few tips I learned along the way as a person up close and personal to the complex and very human system that make up our elections.

1. Please be VERY NICE to any and all phone, text, and in-person canvassers. It is a brutal job that is critical to grassroots success and is a day that is filled for them primarily with spicy rejection. When I would knock doors, the typical myth was hustle to knock on 100 doors in 3ish hours and you may have up to 10 conversations. What do I mean by be nice?

a. Offer door-to-door canvassers a glass of water and to use the bathroom if they need to. You don’t need to have any sort of extended conversation, you can just get in the habit of being humane to folks who are trying their darndest to mobilize hard to reach people.

b. If you see volunteers or paid staff out in the wild (ex. at a fair, festival, or other public place) share a short and sweet sign of encouragement. “Thank you for your work!” can go a long way to boost someone’s spirit when folks are ignoring them and avoiding eye contact.

c. If you get a call or a text, if you can, answer the question. For example, “are you planning to vote for ____________ November 5 th ?” or “Do you know where your polling place is?” or “What is your plan for making sure you get to the polls by 8pm?”

So, you know what is happening on the back end, each voter contact is scored and logged. If you don’t answer, they are supposed to keep reaching out. Why? Because very often voter turnout is way lower than it makes sense to be. People forget to vote. People have multiple jobs and responsibilities and getting time to swing by to cast a ballot takes some organization.

Giving non-answers such as, “I’m all set” or “I’m good” drives my head to a point! What does that mean!?! Like truly, what am I supposed to surmise from that? You’re ‘all set’ to do what?! You’re good? Well, that’s nice. I’m not particularly good since things like a humane path to citizenship, book bans, and LGBTQ discrimination are on the ballot. So rather than beat around the bush, let’s talk about voting.

Or, the snappier, “it’s none of your business!” is so intense. Because here’s the thing, my reproductive rights are none of your business, but alas alack, here we are voting on them. So I’m talking to you because it very literally is my business. It’s all our business. Organizers aren’t trying to pry, they are trying to quite literally count who they can count on so they can move on to focus on voters other than you.

When you are responding to questions being asked, again, you don’t have to have long conversation. That is not a requirement of these interactions. Here’s my general response, “Yes, I am going to be voting for _______ . Or no, I will not be voting for _______. My polling place is Crosstown Church. I have a valid ID I can bring with me and neither my address nor name has changed since the last election. Thank you so much for all your hard work! I really appreciate it. Bye!”

2. It’s important to remember that not all people are eligible to vote in this year’s election. So, before you berate someone for not voting, take a breath and do not assume that’s available to everyone this year.

Many people live in mixed immigration status families (ex. someone is a citizen, someone has a Green card, someone has DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], someone is an asylum-seeker, someone is a resettled refugee, someone is on a school or work visa, someone is undocumented). Depending on your status, your eligibility to vote might be different, even from other adults in the same family.

Additionally, former felony convictions can be a reason why a U.S. adult can’t vote this November. There are several advocacy organizations and leaders working on this stream of voter disenfranchisement and suppression.

According to The Sentencing Project,

“The United States is an outlier nation in that it strips voting rights from millions of citizens solely on the basis of a criminal conviction.

As of 2022, over 4.4 million people in the United States were disenfranchised due to a felony conviction.

This is due in part to over 50 years of U.S. mass incarceration, wherein the U.S. incarcerated population increased from about 360,000 people in the early 1970s to nearly 2 million in 2022.

While many U.S. states have scaled back their disenfranchisement provisions, a trend that has accelerated since 2017, the United States still lags behind most of the world in protecting the right to vote for people with criminal convictions.”

As you might imagine, because of which communities are overtly and over-policed (ex. People of Color, trans folks, poor folks), the kinds of people disenfranchised by the laws are predictable and follow patterns of identity, not morality.

I bring both these examples up because intercultural capacity-building work reminds us NOT to universalize situations, but instead, to learn to handle the complexity of reality. The truth is, not everyone who is currently eligible to vote in the U.S. will exercise that privilege this year, and there are millions of people who would LOVE the opportunity to vote but for whatever the reason, this year, are not allowed.

3. For the love of all that is holy – please vote EARLY!

Maybe you have voted early before. Maybe this would be your first year. Let me implore you – voting early is a kindness you can do to all people currently organizing around this election. As soon as your vote gets cast and counted organizer’s time, attention, and energy can go towards other voters.

If you like the event of voting, eventize it! Just do it early. In some states, early voting starts this month (September). Go to your Secretary of State’s website to look up your options for early voting based on where you live.

During and after the election in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many states and jurisdictions expanded access to ways more people could cast their ballots. Long a ‘states rights’ argument and difference from one geographic location to the next (for example, Oregon has been voting exclusively by mail for decades), there is sometimes an assumption that the ‘old way’ of voting must be the best. But in reality, having only one day (roughly an 8-12 hour window) is not doable for many Americans.

- Folks living with illness, chronic conditions, and disabilities may have a hard time getting to go vote during that narrow window.

- People with caregiving responsibilities (for children and/or elders) might not be able to step away long enough to go vote.

- And people with multiple jobs may not be able to squeeze in voting while going from one shift to the next.

You get it – the smaller the window to vote the less people will be able to cast their vote.

There are many articles and pieces on early voting, like this one from NPR (https://www.npr.org/2022/10/28/1128695831/united-states-2022-patterns-mail-early-voting). The gist of it is that increasing access and modalities means we have a better shot at hearing more voices in our democracy. And across the U.S. and the globe there are proven records of safe and fair elections conducted a number of different ways in functioning democracies.

One of the best reasons to vote early, if nothing else has inspired you up to this point, is that you can do something else on Election Day! Like – canvass your neighborhood and text your family and friends to ensure they have what they need to vote.

Thank you for reading/listening to my little rant about how the proverbial Election Day sausage is made. It is not magic. It is both an art and a science, and it’s very hard work. Thank you for considering adjusting your election season behavior towards greater equity and inclusion in whatever ways call to you. If you’re interested in volunteering or donating to a campaign or cause you care about and would like recommendations of reputable organizations to invest in, send me an email (trina@trinaolson.com) and I’d be happy to share who I support.

Onward,