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Voter Services Committee

"Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society."
— John Lewis

A Mask with a Message

We have a supply of masks that are especially suitable to wear while registering voters. Buy yours now! Arrangements will be made to drop it off to you or you can pick it up. Limited, quantities, first preference to members of the Voter Services team.

Voter Registration Goal: Increase the number of Registered Voters in City of Rochester (1%  would be 1,370)

— Primary target – Lowest voter registration County Leg Districts (22, 25, 28, 29)
— Secondary target – Young Voters (high school, college, under 30)

Activities for Reaching Goal

1. Educate on election processes (Who/How/Where/When)  via website, social media, messaging to partners, flyers
2. Train LWV volunteers on how to register 
3. Attend
   - Events within the City of Rochester (eg BLM rallies)
   - Food Link Curbside Markets
   - Food Link Summer Meals Grab and Go
   - Public Market
   - High school events
   - College events
   - Naturalization ceremonies
   - Other, please suggest
    
4. Door-to-door registration in target LDs
5. Social media (Facebook & Twitter)
   - Organic and paid promotion
   - #IVoteBecause
   - My first vote videos
   - local celeb voting PSAs
   - sharing of national pro-voting materials
6. Communicate with partners on how they can encourage their constituents to register and amplify social media

Get Out the Vote (GOTV) Goals for 2020

For many years, we concentrated mostly on registering voters. After the 2016 election we requested the list of voters we'd registered in 2016 from the Board of Elections. We learned that we'd registered about 4,000 voters but only about 300 had voted. Since then, we spend a lot of time trying to persuade people to exercise their vote.

This year, we've articulated these goals:

1. Mobilize 20%  of those we recently registered to vote to actually vote
2. Increase voter turnout within each of the 4 targeted LDs by 5% (22, 25, 28, 29)

Techniques for mobilizing registered voters

1. Early Voting events Oct. 24 at city early voting sites
   We feel that early voting is not yet well-known and could solve many of the problems of fear of absentee ballots being discarded and fear of long lines on election day.
   To publicize it, we are planning festive celebrations of voting to be held at each early voting cite in the city, on Oct. 24, the first day of early voting.
   These celebrations will include life-sized Frederick Douglass cutouts where people can share their feelings with him about casting their vote, music, food, speakers and more.
2. Absentee Ballot and Early Voting publicity in weeks leading up to election.
3. Social Media Campaign (both paid and organic)
4. Texting campaigns
5. Messaging via our partners
6. Provide sample ballots at registration events, with instructions
7. Mail postcards and/or text to voters we registered
8. Door-to-door reminders (flyers on absentee, early voting, Vote411, polling sites)
9. Lawn signs in target LDs
10. Offer ride to the polls (partner with other groups to do this)

Why Yes, You Can Help!

Want to help us prepare for a fair election with high turnout and and educated electorate this year? We need you if you have the following skills/interests:

• Like to talk to people about why voting is important
• Have writing or design skills for preparing flyers, stickers, etc.
• Like to take pictures of people excited about voting
• Like to sort through pictures and crop and size them for social media
• Like to plan social media campaigns
• Want to learn about targetting
• Like door-to-door work
• Like data analysis
• Like to help plan and organize candidate forums
• Like to write email newsletters

The co-chairs of the Voter Services committee are Barbara Grosh and Kim Smith.

If you would like to join in our efforts, please email us at voterservices@lwv-rma.org. We also welcome invitations and suggestions.