The Future of GOTV

These past two days I've been in Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kansas. 

Not physically, of course. But rather, I have been part of six separate state campaigns engaged in final Get Out The Vote efforts. This year, due to the pandemic, the 2020 presidential campaign has gone digital. There is little to no door knocking, tabling, or in-person phone banks. There are no traditional campaign offices where volunteers bop in and out for their shifts. The in-person rallies that President COVID has insisted upon doing have been modified by the Biden campaign to follow CDC guidelines. Rather than packing together his supporters like sardines, Joe Biden and his campaign staff have instead adapted and have moved to drive-in rallies to allow audience members to attend a rally while staying safely inside their vehicles. This not only keeps them safe, but also keeps them away from a Trump campaign that would willingly strand its supporters in places like Omaha and Pennsylvania. This is a world that I myself as a field organizer could not have imagined just four years ago. 

And yet, despite these limitations, we have seen record-breaking early vote numbers. As of 6 PM on Sunday, over 93 million Americans had already voted. States like Hawaii and Texas had already eclipsed their entire vote totals from 2016. Young voters are on a pace to vote and even surpass 2008 levels, which featured the historic nomination of Barack Obama. People are waiting in line to vote for several hours and are doing so despite obvious attempts by Republicans to deny them access to the ballot box. Democratic leaders are being creative in their efforts to make sure people can safely vote during a pandemic with the Harris County, Texas example of drive-thru voting being the most innovative. Knowing that voters cannot be reached in traditional ways, Democrats have gone above and beyond in using the resources available to get their people to the polls. 

Nowhere has that been more apparent than through the use of technology. Without access to traditional campaign activities, technology has been the great equalizer in 2020. Field organizers begin the process early on by "meeting" established party leaders in their turf through the Zoom video conferencing software. They then begin the process of recruiting leaders through online sign-ups for events. There are still phone banks to registered voters using cell phones and virtual phone banks but you are now in a Zoom room rather than a campaign office. The trainings are done by campaign staff using both Zoom as well as PowerPoint presentations. Depending on the campaign, sometimes there will even be dual events: one for veteran phone bankers who can jump right in to calling and one for first-time phone bankers who have never called before. There are even Google forms that callers fill out upon completion of a shift, providing the campaign with an instant evaluation of the callers' experience.  

In addition to calling voters, a new form of outreach has truly blossomed in 2020: text messaging. This was a campaign strategy in its infancy in 2016 and wasn't available to field organizers until the final month of the campaign. Even then, it was more of a novelty than a targeted campaign technique. But texting has become a critical part of the 2020 campaign. It allows volunteers to reach large numbers of voters as a batch of 300 messages can be sent within minutes. It also serves multiple purposes. Like phone banking, text messages can be used to ID voters, recruit for events, or create a voting plan. An added bonus is the integration of texting apps that can be done on a computer or tablet. This allows volunteers to have open separate windows where they are talking with voters and can then input that information from voters on an online form for signing them up for a specific campaign event. Since the voters' information is all right there, they are simply asked to confirm their email address and they are then signed up right there on the spot. 

Having this system is place has allowed for ambitious volunteers to shift from campaign to campaign, reaching different voters. Once you learn the text messaging system, it is very easy to bounce back and forth between campaigns with little to no learning curve. With GOTV still having "shifts", a volunteer can easily sign up for multiple shifts across multiple campaigns at the same time. He or she simply logs onto the messaging app, sends his or her first batch of texts, and then periodically checks for responses throughout the day. Whereas you have to be focused with a traditional phone bank, text bankers can multitask and can even text bank during a small ten- or fifteen-minute window as time allows. Having that freedom and flexibility is extremely appealing to those working from home with inconsistent daily schedules and it also greatly appeals to working parents who can text at a time when their little 'uns may be gently put down for an afternoon nap.  

Now, text banking is not perfect. It relies on voters having a phone with texting capabilities. This automatically rules out low-income individuals who don't have access to the technology. In addition, roughly 90% of text messages go unanswered. People tend to read the initial message but if you aren't political or don't want to respond or maybe even if you're having a bad day, then that initial message will go into the vast void of nothingness. Roughly 30% of those that do respond request to be taken off the list. Therefore, if you send say 300 texts, you may get good, solid data on only 20 people. But politics is a numbers game. Those 20 people are then shifted from the broad voter universe into the more exclusive campaign universe. This process is repeated exponentially as more and more voters are identified. If a campaign has done its job, then those final round of GOTV texts are going directly to identified supporters of the campaign universe to either recruit them to the last few large campaign events or to make sure they have a plan in place to vote. On Election Day itself, every single text goes to a voter to make sure he or she is voting and that he or she knows exactly where to go to cast their ballot. 

Seeing this evolution opens up a world of possibilities. The 2024 presidential campaign will combine the strategies of both 2016 and 2020. Assuming the pandemic is under control thanks to President Biden, there will be a return to traditional canvassing. But canvassing will be part of a wider strategy and that will start with texting. Texting will be the strategy that reaches younger and more tech-savvy voters. The focus will then be to phone calling to reach those who don't respond to text messages. Those that don't respond to texts or calls will then receive a canvassing visit. Done in this way, the 2024 campaign will reach unprecedented numbers of voters as the majority of voters will be available in one of these three ways. Not everybody will respond, of course, yet the idea of a presidential campaign finally having caught up to the available technologies would be a game changer. 

But even more intriguing is the idea of standardizing the technologies over the next 4 years. Imagine getting to September of 2024 and having an army of 1 million text bankers nationwide already trained. Imagine being able to shift those text bankers to various swing states as needed. Imagine both out-of-state text and phone bankers working collaboratively on doing swing state outreach. Imagine the data gathered then relayed to the on-the-ground-staff and volunteers who then work with an army of trained canvassers to reach those previously unreached voters. This, this is the exciting part. That campaigns can work across the country collaboratively. That someone in a solidly blue or red state can help make the difference in the election. Imagine those working across all our time zones to reach any and all voters. We're not there yet, but by 2024 we very well could be at a place where everyone in America is politically engaged, no matter where they live. 

What a place that would be.