The Six Steps to Launching a Voter Empowerment Campaign

Voter empowerment project

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Running a voter empowerment campaign requires a great deal of time and commitment on your organization's part, but the actual process can be stream-lined into six basic steps:

  1. Form an advisory board
  2. Organize a database
  3. Register voters
  4. Educate registrants
  5. Bring registrants to the polls
  6. Tally voters

1) Form an advisory board

For a mental health voter empowerment campaign to be successful, it must be a collaborative effort between the various mental health stakeholders in the community. Only with a broad coalition of supporters will you be able to: achieve the funding you need, obtain access to mental health consumers, win the trust of mental health consumers, and provide adequate public education.

Consequently, the first step to launching a voter empowerment campaign is to form an advisory board to oversee the management of your campaign. This board should include representatives of: the various mental health consumer and family organizations in your area; any consumer clubhouses, housing or work organizations; inpatient and outpatient facilities; and civil rights organizations such as the League of Women Voters specialized in teaching people how to vote. Your advisory board should also include an attorney familiar with mental health and/or disability rights, local politicians from BOTH major parties, and any individuals who may be able to secure funding for the campaign.

2) Organize a database

Without a carefully organized database, a voter empowerment campaign will quickly collapse into chaos. In order to protect the confidentiality of those individuals you register, and in order not to jeopardize your campaign's non-profit status - the campaign database should be kept on its own computer. Look for computer donations from either computer retailers or businesses that may be upgrading and discarding older model computers.

You should use your database to store registrants' phone numbers and addresses as well as to keep track of when you send out what mailings. Finally, you should keep track of the number of people you register who actually vote.

3) Register voters

Registration should take place year-round, but should be stepped up in the final weeks before registration deadlines. There are two basic impediments that must be overcome in registering individuals with mental disorders. The first is making contact with these individuals; the second is winning their trust.

Fortunately, many people with mental illnesses tend to congregate in obvious places: inpatient and outpatient facilities, VA hospitals, clubhouses, clinics, doctor's offices, sheltered work and sheltered housing facilities. Voter registration should be conducted at all such locations. Additionally, efforts must be made to register the homeless.

Many individuals with mental disorders may be reluctant to vote because they either believe they are not allowed to do so or because they are simply afraid of registering. Voter empowerment campaign workers must clearly state that people with mental illnesses are, indeed, allowed to vote. The best people to spread this message and the best people to win the trust of potential registrants are mental health consumers. Therefore, mental health consumers should handle the registration part of your campaign.

4) Educate registrants

Public education should be a year-round activity and should have two major thrusts: (1) teaching registrants about civil procedure (2) keeping registrants informed about the issues.

Teaching registrants about civil procedure entails explaining to them how to register, informing them that they are eligible to register, educating about the different types of elections and about party structures, keeping them informed about election dates, and even explaining the actual mechanics of using a voting booth or filling out a ballot.

Keeping the registrants informed about the issues will entail a great deal of effort for your organization. You must collect and disseminate information on the candidates in a non-partisan manner. You should conduct candidate surveys, asking them for their stance on the pertinent mental health questions, and you should organize a meet the candidates night. Your campaign's job is to provide information, but you are never, under any circumstances, to endorse a particular party or candidate.

5) Bring registrants to the polls

Many of the individuals whom your campaign registers to vote will not actually cast their votes, but your job is to make sure that as many people as possible do indeed vote. For those individuals who cannot make it to the polls, your organization must arrange for absentee voting. You may also need to make arrangements to set up voting booths in inpatient facilities.

A few weeks before election day, you should mail reminders to registrants that election day is approaching. In the final days before elections, your campaign workers should also follow-up by making phone calls. Going door-to-door and hanging reminders on doorknobs is also a good approach.

Transportation must also be provided to those voters who cannot make it to the polls. And for those voters not comfortable entering a voting booth by themselves, volunteers must be on hand to actually enter the booths with them.

6) Tally voters

To measure the effectiveness of the national mental health voter empowerment project, it is important to keep a tally of those registrants who actually cast their vote on Election Day. Through such record-keeping, potential contributors, new registrants and the public at-large can be made aware of the success of the project's impact.

There are three main means of tallying voters. First, whatever government agency is in charge of voting procedures at the local level must compile a list of everyone who voted on Election Day. That information is public record, and your organization may obtain this list and simply compare the names of those individuals who voted with the names of your project's registrants. Second, since volunteers frequently assist members in getting to polling places, these volunteers can simply keep a running tally of the voters they bring to the polls. Finally, with the help of the phone company, a system for tracking voice mail responses can also be set up.