Increasing Democrat participation in elections by focusing on underrepresented voters

Democracy Through Voting is a family endeavor, originating with a husband-wife team in California and later expanded, for projects outside of California, to include the wife’s sister and her partner in Massachusetts, and their two brothers. The mission is to increase Democrat participation in elections by focusing on underrepresented voters.

Since 2018 our group has produced and distributed over 700,000 postcards, flyers, and letters about issues of concern to voters. These have included

• Spanish Language flyers in 2018 to increase voter registration and voting in the Central Valley of California
• A 2020 Adopt-A-Senior-Voter project in Texas, in conjunction with Swing Left Texas
• Voter information and GOTV for the 2020 Georgia Senate Runoff election
• A pro-choice postcard project for Georgia 2022 November election, and also the 2022 Senate run-off election
• A pro-choice postcard project in support of the election of Judge Janet in Wisconsin in 2023
• Two projects (August and November 2023) in support of majority rule and abortion rights in Ohio.

Each of the evidence-based postcard projects described on the projects page uses the same carefully targeted and messaged approach that we used in the 2020 Georgia Senate runoff election. Our analysis of the 2020 data indicated that this method was 3-4 times more effective than the data provided for post cards/letters sent by Vote Forward and many of the other large mail projects. In addition to being highly effective, this project was unusually easy for volunteers to do, as the large eye-catching postcards came with the message pre-printed, as well as pre-printed address labels. Volunteers only needed to add three hand written words, and apply a postage stamp and the address label. In 2020, this method produced an average of two Democrat voters for every hour of volunteer time, and a cost per vote of under $35 (including volunteer expenditures for stamps ).

Our current project (June 2024) is designed to motivate unregistered Californians to register to vote, with information about Reproductive Rights as stimulus to become registered.

If you’d like to volunteer, or learn more, contact democracythroughvoting@gmail.com.