The Blue Voter Guide (https://bluevoterguide.org) is a great resource for voters to help them feel that they know enough to vote down ballot.
From the website: Blue Voter Guide makes voting easy by clearly showing the endorsements of a wide range of forward looking organizations. Blue Voter Guide will show your ballot for all national offices, all statewide offices and ballot measures, and your state legislators. In most locations, we’ll show local races as well.
Great article Martha. Thanks for sharing the Sister District info and program.
One thing that Dems can do late in the game to reach many voters is to hand out "blue ballot" endorsement flyers at the polls. Mecklenburg County NC Dems did that last year and made a big difference in the last race on the ballot. It was a 14-way race for 3 school board seats, with no party designation next to candidate names. We gave blue ballots to about 1/2 the available voters -- that increased votes for the three endorsed candidates by about 5%. If we had reached all voters it would have been closer to 10%! And that's in a race where 40% of votes was enough to win a seat.
There's still time for Dems to design and print their own blue ballots for November.
Let's write this up for publishing in early October. This is good information to go on and with a visual and a little more detail, it would be great as a feature article. Thanks, David.
I have prepared a canvassing guide that has the main talking points for all candidates and issues in our legislative district. It starts with a general description of what Democrats and Republicans stand for. My sources were candidate websites and a progressive newspaper’s descriptions of candidates and initiatives. I had my initiatives summary reviewed by our state’s progressive initiatives activists. I shared this with our local activist network and encourage people to use it as a template for the ballot choices where they live. To adapt it for your area, use the link to view the document in Google Drive, select all, copy and paste into Microsoft Word or a similar program. This creates your own editable version. Or, if you are in another state, you may find it useful as an example for creating your own.
I know--it's so frustrating. Someone reported us as abusive.
The best workaround is to copy content to your feed and post that way. You can also recommend people check out our substack, but you have to be cagey. Instead of providing a link write check out this cool article from www.GrassrootsConnector on substack.com
Another great resource is the non-partisan voter guides from Guides.vote "Our guides.vote team creates nonpartisan voters guides, in English and Spanish, to key elections across the United States. These carefully researched guides allow readers to make confident voting decisions based on clear understanding about where the candidates stand. They offer a concise and credible way to help potential voters overcome political cynicism, overload, and misinformation by making clear the difference between candidates and the stakes of showing up. They help people get past the myth that it’s not worth voting because candidates are “all the same.” more info https://guides.vote/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2024_Impact_Summary_b4.pdf
I just attempted to share on Facebook and was refused. The reason given was that it did not meet community standards. What is with that! I post about politics and the election all the time so I am wondering if they are tightening up in nefarious ways
Facebook has flagged the Grassroots Connector as abusive. Not offensive, but abusive. Go know. Please copy and paste content from our site and I think you can let people know you recommend the grassroots connector on a platform called substack.com Maybe that workaround will do the trick.
Thanks for highlighting these important findings. Lack of familiarity with downballot candidates is one reason for rolloff and one reason why we repeat the name of the candidate we're phonebanking for OVER and OVER!
It's surprising that Dems and Reps act differently when faced with this lack of familiarity -- Dems feel responsible to vote in elections about which they're well-informed, but Reps feel responsible to vote for the party (even if they know nothing if the candidate).
Hopefully we can get Dems to know their candidates AND back the party candidates all the way down the ballot!
The Blue Voter Guide (https://bluevoterguide.org) is a great resource for voters to help them feel that they know enough to vote down ballot.
From the website: Blue Voter Guide makes voting easy by clearly showing the endorsements of a wide range of forward looking organizations. Blue Voter Guide will show your ballot for all national offices, all statewide offices and ballot measures, and your state legislators. In most locations, we’ll show local races as well.
Thanks again, Julie for mentioning the BVG. I expect we'll do an article on guides and esp BVG soon.
Great article Martha. Thanks for sharing the Sister District info and program.
One thing that Dems can do late in the game to reach many voters is to hand out "blue ballot" endorsement flyers at the polls. Mecklenburg County NC Dems did that last year and made a big difference in the last race on the ballot. It was a 14-way race for 3 school board seats, with no party designation next to candidate names. We gave blue ballots to about 1/2 the available voters -- that increased votes for the three endorsed candidates by about 5%. If we had reached all voters it would have been closer to 10%! And that's in a race where 40% of votes was enough to win a seat.
There's still time for Dems to design and print their own blue ballots for November.
Let's write this up for publishing in early October. This is good information to go on and with a visual and a little more detail, it would be great as a feature article. Thanks, David.
I have prepared a canvassing guide that has the main talking points for all candidates and issues in our legislative district. It starts with a general description of what Democrats and Republicans stand for. My sources were candidate websites and a progressive newspaper’s descriptions of candidates and initiatives. I had my initiatives summary reviewed by our state’s progressive initiatives activists. I shared this with our local activist network and encourage people to use it as a template for the ballot choices where they live. To adapt it for your area, use the link to view the document in Google Drive, select all, copy and paste into Microsoft Word or a similar program. This creates your own editable version. Or, if you are in another state, you may find it useful as an example for creating your own.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d9qFGQ8BHZzfSdL-QbByA5UuuUjEsiw5/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101426524615318895030&rtpof=true&sd=true
I can't share this to Facebook because "some members have marked some content as offensive" WTF??
I know--it's so frustrating. Someone reported us as abusive.
The best workaround is to copy content to your feed and post that way. You can also recommend people check out our substack, but you have to be cagey. Instead of providing a link write check out this cool article from www.GrassrootsConnector on substack.com
At least I think that might do it.
Another great resource is the non-partisan voter guides from Guides.vote "Our guides.vote team creates nonpartisan voters guides, in English and Spanish, to key elections across the United States. These carefully researched guides allow readers to make confident voting decisions based on clear understanding about where the candidates stand. They offer a concise and credible way to help potential voters overcome political cynicism, overload, and misinformation by making clear the difference between candidates and the stakes of showing up. They help people get past the myth that it’s not worth voting because candidates are “all the same.” more info https://guides.vote/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2024_Impact_Summary_b4.pdf
I just attempted to share on Facebook and was refused. The reason given was that it did not meet community standards. What is with that! I post about politics and the election all the time so I am wondering if they are tightening up in nefarious ways
Facebook has flagged the Grassroots Connector as abusive. Not offensive, but abusive. Go know. Please copy and paste content from our site and I think you can let people know you recommend the grassroots connector on a platform called substack.com Maybe that workaround will do the trick.
Thanks for highlighting these important findings. Lack of familiarity with downballot candidates is one reason for rolloff and one reason why we repeat the name of the candidate we're phonebanking for OVER and OVER!
Remember when we had to get people used to saying ProtoSAYwhich? We can do it!
It's surprising that Dems and Reps act differently when faced with this lack of familiarity -- Dems feel responsible to vote in elections about which they're well-informed, but Reps feel responsible to vote for the party (even if they know nothing if the candidate).
Hopefully we can get Dems to know their candidates AND back the party candidates all the way down the ballot!