Here at Blue Ripple we’ve been very focused on our core mission: helping our readers find key races and candidates where your support is extra powerful. We choose races that are close, relatively underfunded and in places where votes up and down the ticket are crucial.
But we know some folks want to help more directly, by volunteering their time to help get out the vote (GOTV). In pre-Covid times, this might have meant door-knocking in a swing state, something only available to people with proximity or time. But now, there are more opportunities for phone and text-banking from anywhere to anywhere.
In this post, we’ll look at a few states we think are important—for reasons we’ve already pointed out in previous pieces—and tell you where to sign up for phone and text banking in this final big push for Team Blue!
Contents of this post:
Why phone and text banking are important
Basics of phone and text banking
Key states and organizations
Added 10/30/20: One more thing you can do — help folks “cure” their ballots
Let’s do this!
Why phone and text banking are important
Phone banking is less potent than knocking on doors, but it remains crucial, especially now. Careful studies have shown that phone-banking is particularly effective at GOTV, increasing as much as 3%. Though that might seem small, phone banking can be done at scale. A small percentage of a huge number of calls will produce a lot of votes by election-day!
Text banking seems somewhat less effective, but here too, scale matters. In the time you can use to make a few calls, automated texting apps can reach hundreds, if not thousands, of potential voters. Even if just a tiny fraction of those reminders work, it adds up to a lot of votes. Additionally, youth turnout already looks very promising this year, and younger voters lean Democratic. That’s a group that’s hard to reach with a phone call, but very comfortable with texting, so text banking may be extra-important here.
A new tactic for GOTV work is “Vote Tripling” where callers and/or texters get people to specify 3 friends they will check-in with about voting plans. Friend-to-friend contact is effective in driving turnout and often better received by the voter.
Bottom line: Phone and text banking can both drive extra voters to the polls, and both can be done at large scale, making them effective and important parts of the GOTV effort.
Basics of phone and text banking
Phone banking: If you phone bank, you can get more hang-ups/wrong numbers than conversations, but even those are valuable, since they help campaigns and organizations improve their lists. Once you are connected to someone willing to talk, conversations tend to be short (3-5 minutes), and you might have 5 in an hour of phone banking. You’ll have a script to use and that should cover most of what you need to say. Phone banking can take some getting used to, but it can be deeply rewarding.
Phone banking is often done in groups, via videoconference (Zoom or the like), with a training at the beginning, and people available throughout to answer questions and help you get more comfortable calling strangers. Often, the phone bank will do all the dialing, connecting you only when a person answers a phone, but set-ups vary.
Text banking: Text banking is done through an app (Hustle or ThruText, e.g.). Organizations will provide training, often a video about the texting app and a then a video for each text “campaign” (for example, GOTV in FL). Each texter requests some number of people to start with, and one button launches an initial “wave” of texts, one to each person on the list. Responses come in the text-banking app, not on your phone’s text message app, so your phone number is never sent to a voter. The app will have scripted actions to handle most needed follow-up, e.g., telling someone where to vote or drop off a ballot or asking them who they are reaching out to for vote-tripling.
When text banking, you usually send a wave of texts, perhaps a few hundred, and then handle the responses over the next few hours. So it’s a different commitment of time than a phone bank.
Key states and organizations
If you’re going to phone or text bank, how can you get started? We have two sets of suggestions:
Our recs in 4 key states: In the past few months, many of our analyses have highlighted FL, GA, and TX as crucial for Dems in 2020. GA and TX have become battleground states, with Biden holding a small polling lead in GA and lagging by only a small amount in TX. Both states have senate seats up for grabs as well — GA has two! — and both have state legislatures that could flip in 2020. FL has the most electoral votes among the traditional battleground states and, with experience counting mail-in ballots, it’s essential to any hopes of a Biden win on election night itself. We’re also throwing NC into the mix, based on Nate Silver's observation that an election night Dem win there might be decisive for Biden.
Other places: Some of you might want to call or text into other states (PA! WI! MI! AZ!) — which is also fabulous! Two large organizations organize actions for every battleground state and more, and can hook you up:
SwingLeft’s phone-banking operation seems the most organized, with online trainings and plenty of opportunities in key battleground states.
VoteSaveAmerica (the volunteering arm of the PodSaveAmerica podcast) has a lot of information about volunteering in many battleground states.
One more thing you can do — help folks “cure” their ballots
Another thing you can do for the cause that could have enormous impact in the final few days is helping folks “cure” their ballots. Dem groups in many states are collecting info on whose ballots have been flagged as potentially problematic, and these voters could fix their issues in person before E-day to ensure their votes are counted. State Dem parties and other groups are recruiting volunteers to call the voters and let them know what’s up with their ballot, and how to fix the issues. To get involved, follow these links:
Florida — Swing Left is coordinating a virtual phone bank on Monday 11/2; Spanish and Haitian Creole speakers particularly needed
Let’s do this!
If you’re looking to pitch in to Team Blue with time and effort, we hope these tips have been helpful. Let’s get cracking on phone calls and texts in this final week!
As a reminder, if you’re also looking to make some donations, we can also help you maximize your impact in that department as well:
Here are some lists of “high-impact” candidates to support:
And, here are some other specific donation ideas related to weird issues that might come up in this weird election year:
Worried about closing the deal on election night? We’ve got you covered.
Want to counter possible GOP shenanigans with counting ballots? We do too!
Want to make sure Biden wins if the election gets thrown to Congress? We've got a plan for that!
Thanks for helping join all the blue ripples into a wave — let’s do this!
Image by aflcio2008 via Wikipedia
