Resources for Campaign Volunteers
Whether traveling or not, here are few ways to help out this year
Today is National Voter Registration Day!
Let’s celebrate by looking at some resources you can use to help make a difference in this year’s election. Below are links and suggestions for organizations you can connect with to volunteer or contribute during the final five weeks of Election Season. If this is your first time doing this, you will make contacts and gain experience that will be invaluable in future campaigns.
This year, the traveling campaign volunteer is most likely traveling virtually. There is a lot of information out there and I don’t want to overwhelm you, so let’s keep it simple and manageable. I am not going to bother to list out the various campaigns you could directly work with, but if there is a particular candidate or campaign you want to volunteer with then you should contact them directly. If you are interested in helping out in high-impact races around the country, consult the Trifecta Briefs in the Margin of Error Blog Archive. Those briefs were created for states with multiple layers of important races in battleground states so your volunteer activity can have greater impact.
Best One-Stop Shopping Resource
Mobilize - Mobilize is a fantastic resource in which you can find specific campaign events, phone banks, text banks, and related actions for progressive and Democratic causes. Many of the groups below will use Mobilize as a way to publicize events, recruit volunteers, and organize the work. You can create your own account and keep track of what you have done and what you have committed to do in the future. If you are unfamiliar with Mobilize, stop here first and familiarize yourself with the site.
Voter Persuasion/GOTV
Together2020 – This is an umbrella organization of a lot of groups, such as Swing Left, that is organizing volunteers to phone bank, text bank, and write postcards to voters. The organization is based in Massachusetts, but folks from all over the country are working with them in states like Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Arizona.
State Democratic Party – State parties can be good places to connect with local coordinated campaigns. This is not true in every state, so it can be a bit of crapshoot. But, if you are staying home this year it’s not a bad idea to connect up with your own state party and get involved there. It can help you connect with other Democrats and like-minded politicos in your state and local region, which in turn can help you stay engaged after November 3rd and into state and local elections.
Democratic National Committee – The DNC coordinates a lot of voter outreach, particularly through text banking. You can find DNC actions through Mobilize.
Issue Organizations and Affinity Groups – I am a member of the Sierra Club and volunteer with them on voter outreach. It’s not important that you decide to volunteer with Sierra Club itself, but there are other organizations out there doing similar work that you may already support or be more familiar with. Many groups will focus on “education” of votes, but some engage in voter persuasion and get-out-the-vote activity. The ones who do are often doing so through what is known colloquially as c-4 organizations. Typical nonprofits are c-3 organizations and are restricted from doing certain kinds of lobbying and political activity. C-4 organizations have fewer restrictions on political activity (the catch is that c-4 contributions are not tax deductible like they are for c-3 organizations).
Unions and Community-based organizations – If you belong to a labor union, there will be opportunities for you to engage with voters through your local. Even if your local is not particularly active politically, you can find resources by contacting your local union officials or your central labor council (regional association of unions) or state federation (state association of unions). For national elections, CBOs are not usually the best place to engage with voters. However, there is an important exception to this. In many states, CBOs work in coalition – often with organized labor – to craft shadow coordinated campaigns to the official Democratic coordinated campaigns focused on getting out their members to vote. In 2018 I worked with one of these coalitions in Arizona (Arizona Wins) and the amount of voter contact and engagement they did clearly had an impact in the outcome of state and local races. A good resource for finding these kind of community coordinated campaigns is the resource list at the Movement Voter Project. This is a great resource that allows you to filter your search by activity, issue, and state.
Voter Protection / Voting Rights
Together2020 – See above. T2020 also contacts voters about voter protection issues.
Election Protection – This is an organization that is entirely devoted to working on voter protection issues and recruiting volunteer attorneys and other folks (you don’t need to be a lawyer or paralegal). I worked with EP in Florida during the 2004 election, helping to supervise attorneys and poll watchers across several precincts in Miami-Dade County. The attorneys were there to advise voters or their rights and, if necessary, to talk to poll supervisors about problems at the polls. EP also sets up voter protection “boiler rooms,” where both field volunteers and voters can call in to get answers to specific voting-related questions. If you are a trained legal professional this might be a good option for you, particularly on Election Day itself.
Fair Fight – Election Protection is not the only organization devoted to addressing voter protection issues in the election. Fair Fight was created by Stacey Abrams after losing the Georgia governor’s race by a razor-thin margin in 2018. That year there was a lot of voter suppression in the Peach State that almost certainly cost Abrams the election. Fair Fight helps connect legal professional to ongoing voter rights lawsuits across the country. This is another good option for trained legal professionals.
Voter Registration
It’s a little late in the game to get involved with voter registration activities, but some state deadlines have not passed yet. If you are interested in this, check out the resource page at Movement Vote Project. This is one area where CBOs are often active, so you can see what is going on in your city or town. College students can find opportunities to engage through campus groups such as College Democrats and other affinity groups.
Voting Information
AP Advance Voting Interactive Site - There are a number of organizations out there that provide online information about voting in every state. The AP site is all you really need for early voting (“advance voting” means early voting, mail-in voting, and absentee voting). However, it won’t tell you where to vote on Election Day. For that, you should consult your local or state election agency. One resource is Vote.org, but it could not locate my home address. A simple Google search for “find my polling place” followed by your county/city/town and state should provide you with the information you seek.
There are plenty of other organizations and websites you can consult, but these are good places to start. You will probably end up landing in the right place for you even if you only go to Mobilize. Let’s get to work! Don’t mourn; organize!