With all this talk of an enthusiasm gap fueled by the fervent Tea Party and frustration over the slowness of progress thanks to GOP obstructionism throughout President Obama’s term, Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, and other like-minded voters can take nothing for granted. It is more important than ever that people who want to keep America moving forward need to reach out to every friend, family member, and co-worker who might be interested in a reminder to vote.
That’s why I was so pleased to get wall posts this weekend from Hartford City Councilor Luis Coto and my friend John from the Young Democrats asking me to commit to vote. The ask didn’t end there, however, and that’s the really innovative piece of the newest GOTV social media tactic available from Organizing for America: The Commit to Vote Challenge.
The design of this Facebook app lets you share your reason for voting, and then invite your friends to commit to voting and share their reason too – plus, it even wraps in a little competition to make getting out the vote that much more fun.
Tech President sums it up well:
Hop on over to My.BarackObama.com/CommitChallenge, type in your reason for voting, and the app published your intentions to your Facebook Wall. But it also sets you up to tweak your Facebook friends, one by one, about similarly committing to vote this election (even if the whole tone of the effort is more dutiful performance of civic obligation than the electric fervor that powered things in 2008). For a dollop of competition, the site tracks how you rank compared to the number of commitments your Facebook friends have managed to pull in, awarding titles like “Committer” and “Grassroots Recruiter.”
The spirit of this app fits well with the strategy that Governor Patrick and the Massachusetts Democrats have brought to this election: people talking to people they know. This is the strategy behind their powerful online organizing tool, their Friend Banks, and so much other outreach that’s being done. Gov. Patrick sums it up well:
(If you’re curious, here are the first and third things you can do).
Voters screen their calls (if they even have a land line) and are tired of robocalls and negative ads – and organizers have known throughout history that the way to build a movement is through person-to-person contact.
The Commit to Vote Challenge gives you an easy way to make it personal right now by sharing why you’re going to vote and encouraging the people you know to do the same. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to get this app and get out the vote too!
That being said, the rollout of this app and my over enthusiasm for it did provide a few valuable lessons and critiques to keep in mind as you do your outreach:
- Actually make it personal. When I was asked my reason to vote, I wrote a some
what long reason tied to what’s at stake in Massachusetts and in Washington. My hope being that it would resonate with people wherever they lived and get them thinking about what’s at stake for them. However, I received more than a few people who reminded me they weren’t in Mass, so I’m thinking that wasn’t the best strategy. Instead of taking my approach of copying and pasting my reason for voting into every Wall Post I sent out, consider tailoring your message to each person you talk to – or at least having one national or values-based message, and one for your state and sending them accordingly. - Stream clutter. Unsurprisingly, many of my friends are the political type – and so are many of their friends – which means that as this rolled out, a number of people felt like the app was cluttering up their feeds. Frankly, I’ve seen many causes that take up the feed for the day with people all updating their statuses on behalf of ah issue, and I can’t think of any cause more important to raise awareness for than voting. I’d say there’s too much at stake not to use this opportunity to remind everyone you can to get out the vote, but it might be worthwhile for future developers to consider a private message or event invitation instead for future iterations. That said, I know the app developers did add a mechanism to filter out everyone who already committed so they won’t get repeated invitations and hopefully that will reduce some redundancy. But really, it’s election time and we only elect good candidates if we get people to the polls, so don’t be bashful about sharing why you’re going to vote and then making personal invitations for others to do the.
- People are protective of their walls. I didn’t realize this, but a number of people just don’t like the idea of having this automatically sent to their wall – even if you are really there selecting them to send it to. As I said in number two, there’s too much at stake in this election not to reach out using this app, but do try to make it personal and perhaps a suggestion for future iterations would be an invitation to one massive GOTV Facebook Event, which hold your friends’ walls harmless and have the added benefit of adding election day to their calendars.
Help create excited voters and start some good conversations like the ones above and the ones below (even with my Massachusetts-oriented message) by getting this app and getting out the vote now!
Was your Facebook stream flooded? If so, are you excited there’s such energy among your friends to vote, or do you think there are other ways an app could turn voters on without turning others off?
I’ve included my reasons for voting below the screenshots – check them out and leave the reason you shared on Facebook in a comment – but, really, make sure you invite your family and friends to GOTV first!
- because we need more progress,
- because I don’t want our country or Massachusetts moving backwards,
- because the Bush admin was kind of a drag,
- because so many candidates like Charle Baker promise more of the same failed policies,
- because Democrats in Congress & Mass have been fighting for and helping us recover (did you know MA is #2 in recovery & 5th best for doing business?),
- because Democrats like Gov. Patrick and our Congresspeople have values that put people first and support equality (which is even more important when things are tough and Republicans would add $700bil to our deficit for a tax cut for rich people in Congress and put our safety net and schools in danger with an untimely sales tax cut in MA),
- because there are infinitely more reasons I could go on with,
- because there are real choices in this election and I’m not going to be wondering if there’s more I could have done if Republicans win and set us back decades on financial regs, civil rights, and health care reform,
- because there’s more work to do,
- because there’s too much at stake.
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