Would a handwritten postcard make you more likely to vote?

Politics & Elections
1

My wife signed up for a non-partisan “get out the vote” campaign. We have to hand write 200 postcards and mail them to registered voters in Ohio in mid October, reminding them to vote on Nov 5.

So, let’s say you’re one of those “undecided” voters out there. Would getting a personally handwritten postcard in the mail make you more likely to actually get out and vote?

My guess is that most of these will get ignored and tossed out along with all the other political campaign literature that winds up in people’s mailboxes. But who knows? I suppose if it gets even a few people off their butts, it’s worth it.

2

I think it’s great that you’re doing this. It would make me happy to receive a card, but I vote in every election so it wouldn’t change my behavior.

I was talking with someone the other day who is in their 30s and has never voted. I pointed out that abortion could be made illegal and that upset her, but not enough to get her to register/vote.

One of her reasons is that if she registers then she’ll get called for jury duty, which is why her parents told her to never vote.

3

I get lots of junk mail that looks “hand written” for stuff like window replacement, home insurance, etc. I’m sure all that stuff is printed and not written by “Joe” who signed it at the bottom. I would probably think the same thing about a political postcard that was literally handwritten. I would just assume it was printed to look like handwriting.

It’s probably still worth doing. It’s hard to know what will motivate someone to vote. That postcard may be the one thing that gets someone to the polls

4

Not at all. What a weird waste of volunteer time.

Her parents are terrible people. She should get better than them.

5

Answer to the thread question is no, but, like others here, I am a high propensity voters.

My wife and I got a hand-written card last week saying we should vote the ballot we have received. But we have not received it yet.

After we receive it in the mail, the county will, per past experience, send us its own automated reminder a few weeks later. We get lots of election related mail.

I’m skeptical that campaigning works. But unlike TV ads, I cannot see a handwritten note to registered Democrats backfiring.

6

They are indeed. Her dad taught her and her brothers that wearing a seatbelt was a bad thing, because you could be stuck in a burning car?!?!

7

If you saw my handwriting, you would definitely not mistake it for something pre-printed on a computer. :stuck_out_tongue:

In fact I had considered typing the mailing list into a spreadsheet and printing off mailing labels, but decided that was more likely to get them thrown out than handwriting them.

8

I participate in a “voters abroad” activism group, and every time this comes up, I wrinkle my nose and make myself small. I’m a little paranoid about our current surveillance culture, so if I were to get a piece of handwritten mail that starts “you don’t know me but,” I would immediately throw it out and tape tinfoil over my windows. And I assume I’m not alone, so I wouldn’t want to inflict this on anyone else.

9

They also use the drivers license lists to call for jury duty. Seems like the parents are sending mixed signals. Or they are batshit insane.

I’ve never been undecided about voting so I’m not the target audience for the postcards. But I imagine if I received a hand written postcard I would at least read it rather than toss it out immediately.

10

We periodically get handwritten letters from people belonging to some religious group (jehova witnesses maybe). I always read the letter out of amazement and for laughs. They are usually multiple pages of neat handwriting.

11

I’m doing the handwritten postcards as well, and I can’t imagine that receiving one would change anything for me. However, it makes me feel better to be doing something other than getting wound up and watching the news, and maybe it will even work.

12

Part of the success of the campaign will be the message itself. Being handwritten might mean there’s a slightly greater chance it will be read, but non-voting people won’t be motivated to vote simply because they got a handwritten note. It’s hard to understand what will get a non-voter to vote. I suspect something like this postcard will be just one small aspect of what might get someone to decide to vote. It’s like filling a bucket drop-by-drop. This postcard is just one drop in the bucket. Eventually, the hope is the non-voter gets enough of these drops in their bucket so that it fills up and they are finally motivated enough to vote.

Another aspect is that the more political solicitations one gets, the more motivated someone might be. If they only got one piece of political junk mail during the election season, they might not feel the election is very important. They might even forget about it. But if they get 100’s of pieces of political junk mail, they may think it’s more important. They’ll probably be griping about the amount of junk mail, but at least they’ll know there’s an election going on and the parties are very interested in having that person vote. It might make the person feel like their vote is valuable and worth their time to cast.

13

Some people freak out, insist the postcard was machine-generated despite being shown evidence to the contrary, show it to their town clerk, and come to the conclusion that it is an “improper mailing concept”.

14

Different states do it differently. I have no clue how it’s done where @kayaker lives (presumably the woman was in PA)


As to the OP, I consider that postcard effort an insulting waste of campaign volunteers’ time and enthusiasm. Then again, I’m not a paid political consultant and may not know what actually works and doesn’t. (Although I’m not entirely convinced they do either. Seems to be a lot of blindly throwing any/everything at the wall while fervently hoping some of it sticks.)

Then again, I’m not your target voter. I pitch 100% of political (or commercial) literature junk mail unread as a matter of principle. I want to actively prevent that stuff from working so it’ll stop being inflicted on anyone in general and me in particular.

I know a) that I will vote, and b) how I will vote. I’ve known both those things for decades now and the rest is mere annoyance.

15

Thanks for the cite. That was one of the unintentionally wackiest threads I’ve read in years.

16

I usually have a good laugh when I get one of these, then I file them in the circular file, which I also call my ha-ha file.

17

As noted previously, if they want you for jury duty, there are other lists you can be found on.

During my 5 years in Texas I was called for jury duty twice. In all the years I’ve lived elsewhere (and been registered to vote in all locations), I’ve never been called. Not registering to vote for fear of being called for jury duty is, on a practical basis, impractical.

If I wasn’t already a regular voter, getting a handwritten postcard wouldn’t persuade me to vote.

18

These sorts of campaigns always remind me of The Guardian’s Operation Clark County in 2004. Subscribers to that British newspaper could request the mailing address of an undecided voter in Clark County, Ohio (then a swing county in a swing state) and were encouraged to write a personal letter to encourage them to vote against another four years of George W. Bush.

The article regarding the response from voters was titled “Dear Limey Assholes. . .”

19

As someone who has done hundreds of hours of GOTV phone banking and door-knocking, I’m glad to have postcard-writing as an option. The people behind it say everything is data driven, down to the messaging and timing of dropping the cards into a mailbox. Even if you get 2% the people you send cards to out to vote, consider that a success. These are targeted to swing state Democratic voters who don’t always vote.

When I would door-knock and phone bank, I can’t tell you how many people would yell at me, slam the door in my face, tell me to “get a fucking job,” get paranoid about how I got their address/number, etc. But that’s just how GOTV works. You HAVE to make contact. In 2008, I’ll never forget the conversation I had with a guy in Toledo, OH. It was after 6pm on election day, I had probably knocked on close to 200 doors that day, most people weren’t home, some said they already voted, some shut the door in my face. But this one guy answered, seemed surprised that someone knocked, and he said he had forgotten where his polling place was but wanted to vote. I told him, he thanked me, then as I continued walking down the street, he waved as he drove by me on (I presume) his way to vote. After that one conversation, I felt my day was successful.

As individuals, it’s not about moving massive amounts of people to the polls or to your side. It’s just getting 1-5 people that might not have otherwise have done anything. That’s all we can do. So if you’re writing postcards, don’t let these negative nellies discourage you. Even if your writing campaign only gets 2-3 Democrats to the polls in swing states, that, along with the thousands of other postcard writers, can make a difference in campaigns up and down the ballot.

FYI, this postcard campaign doesn’t tell people who to vote for-- just encourages them to get out and vote. It’s non-partisan, but targets Democrats who are inconsistent voters.

I reckon most people will say a postcard won’t make a difference in what they do, but they would also probably say a door knock or phone call or a facebook ad or radio spot won’t make a difference either. Research shows otherwise. And postcard writing as a GOTV effort is still relatively new, and the Progressive Turnout Project tracks impact, down to what messages work the best. So if nothing else, this is helping campaigns figure out what works, and hone their methods.

So to you postcard writers: Good for you! Keep up the good work. Every little bit helps.

20

Did her parents tell her to never get a driver’s license?

And they can use other sources also.

https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-procedure/how-are-potential-jurors-selected.html

States and counties maintain lists of citizens for possible jury selection. These lists are a compilation of information from the Department of Motor Vehicles, voter registrations, phone books, and other sources that would provide a list of potential jurors.

– I’m not the target audience, I’m voting anyway. I suspect most people in this thread are also not the target audience, and that anybody on these boards who is in that audience probably isn’t reading P&E threads.