It’s an understatement to say it’s important for everyone to vote in this year’s presidential election. The good news is that there are hundreds of organizations working to promote the vote, applying lessons learned from past elections and past successes. Taking this voting imperative a step further, other organizations are centering the voter experience by giving practical and tailored information to empower voters to cast their vote with more assurance.
The League’s Healthy Democracy mapping project has catalogued over 500 organizations that are working to spread the message of the importance of voting, registering people to vote, and making sure that everyone has the necessary information to cast votes more confidently. Many of these organizations are focused on populations that sometimes register or vote in lower numbers, like young people and new citizens.
A relatively new organization doing this important work is ActiVote. The ActiVote app removes many of the obstacles that stop people from voting by using data to help people to vote in their local, state, and federal elections. ActiVote empowers voters by asking them about their stance on issues and then mapping their views in comparison to those of the candidates in each race. It also helps voters decipher ballot initiatives and referenda, which are often written in confusing terms (this is particularly helpful for new or infrequent voters).
One of the larger coalitions working to increase voter turnout, the Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition is focused on increasing the number of college students voting. SLSV is a nonpartisan network of more than 300 U.S. nonprofit groups working on almost 2,000 campuses in all 50 states. Founded in 2016, SLSV has been part of the reason for the increase in student voting from 52% in 2016 to 66% in 2020, and from 19% in the non-presidential year of 2014 to 27% in 2022.
To increase student turnout, SLSV invested in existing institutions at its campuses, building the capacity of campus organizations to collect and analyze data, conduct registration and voter mobilization drives and make voting fun and interesting. The group also worked to embed voter registration and mobilization into existing activities, like course registration, and devoted extra time toward populations that sometimes have lower participation rates.
Another organization that focuses on young people, but also others less likely to vote, is the Voter Participation Center (VPC). Founded in 2003, VPC devotes its efforts to register youths, people of color and unmarried women and get them to vote. The organization says that it has directly helped 6 million people register and vote during the past 20 years.
When We All Vote promotes voting by helping to “close the race and age gap.” Created by Michelle Obama and supported by many celebrities, When We All Vote works to register new voters across the country and advance civic education. In 2020, When We All helped 512,000 people to register and vote, with its main tools including texting teams, food drives in which voter registration was included and school-based registration drives.
Vote 411 is a project of the League of Women Voters Education Fund (LWVEF) that was launched in October of 2006, as a “one-stop-shop” for election related information. It provides nonpartisan information to the public with both general and state-specific information on the following aspects of the election process, allowing users to simply enter their identification information to learn about deadlines and voting processes in their area.
These are just a few of the hundreds of organizations gearing up to promote the vote and empower voters this year. As always, these and other nonprofits depend on donations and volunteers, so now’s your chance to sign up to make a difference!
