The Power of Five

Uncommitted voters need nudges—five of them

One of the biggest barriers to getting out the vote is the uneasy feeling that by urging people to vote, we’re somehow bothering them. Annoying them. Even downright pissing them off.

And, of course, we are.

I confess, I’m a people-pleaser. I quail at the thought of annoying people. Even sending a postcard nagging someone to vote can seem like an impolite intrusion. But as the saying goes, it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it. Every single person who is on the fence about voting needs to be reminded and prodded, and yes, bothered, again and again and again and again and again. Five times.

Who says so? An organization known as Callhub is a nonpartisan digital platform for getting out the vote used by many campaigns, and they’ve done fifteen years of research on improving voter turnout. According to them, five “touches” as they call it, is the optimal number of times people need to be reminded to vote. A “touch” can be any reminder—a phone call, a postcard, a sign, a text, a social media post, a knock on the door.

This doesn’t apply to the die-hards, of course, the committed ones on both the left and the right who would rather die than miss an election. I mean the people who don’t generally follow politics…don’t really like either candidate…aren’t sure about where their polling place is…might not bother anyway. Five touches may be enough to prod them all the way to the ballot box. Some sources believe that more than five touches are needed--the progressive organization Swing Left claims that ten is the magic number.

According to Callhub:

--Generic GOTV (get out the vote) messages have minimal effect on voter turnout. (“Your vote is your voice!” kind of thing)

GOTV messages that help voters make a plan and provide voting information has significant impact on voter turnout, especially in local races. (“Early voting starts on Tuesday at 9am at the Park St. Public Library.”)

One thing I’ve done for the last couple of years is to go to the nearest city and put up posters giving the dates, times, and places for early voting. (In my area, the suburbs are very red, but the city dwellers trend blue.) Early voting is still so new, and in the city very few people were aware of it. So my get-out-the-vote group printed up a bunch of inexpensive flyers. We (three volunteers in an afternoon) put them up everywhere we could think of—pizza joints, doctor’s offices, bus stops, convenience stores, libraries, liquor stores, food pantries. Since the flyers weren’t advertising a particular candidate, most shopkeepers were okay with putting them up on the wall for a week or two.

So as you went about your business in town—buying milk, going to the doctor, picking up a pizza—you bumped into the reminder signs again and again and again—getting two or three “touches” in the crucial days right before the election. It’s the power of repetition.

It’s barely the start of spring now, and the November election may seem like it’s a long way away. But it’s getting closer by the minute. There are only 223 days left. Check out this unnerving countdown clock if you don’t believe me. It’s not too early to get started with those five touches. Or six, or seven, or…

Dear Friends,

Are you more than a little worried about the election of 2024 and wondering what to do about it? I hope you’ll continue to check out The Optimistic Activist.

Every Tuesday I post some ideas for doing something. How to get out the vote, spread the word, and support progressive candidates. Ideas for simple but effective activism. As easy, as practical, as do-able as I can make them.

Together, I think, we could really make a difference.