The Power of Accountability: Know your Members and Policymakers will too

By Kelly Anthony

As we learned in the 2000 elections cycle, every vote really does matter. Voter turnout among people with disabilities is critically important in establishing our community’s political power, but more important is the act of accounting for these voters when we are educating and impacting policymakers. This accountability factor gives us the ability to say to a state representative, for instance, “Of the 16,000 voters who cast a ballot in your election, 2,000 of those voters were people with disabilities.” This statement moves us quickly to a clear position of power. With the ability to account for voters, we shift our capacity in affecting policy from that of our historic “sophisticated begging” message of “do the right thing for people with disabilities because it’s the right thing to do”, to a much more powerful and effective statement of “do the right thing for people with disabilities…or else!” Elected officials know which constituencies vote and which don’t vote. They recognize the difference between a house of cards and a dependable voting block, and they respect the power of the organizations and people who have the ability to activate and account for voters. After all, to a policymaker, voters and voter turnout equal job security.

So how do we account for voters? First, we as disability rights leaders must recognize the power we already possess in our organizations’ memberships. Our members and the lists where they are kept are fundamental to our success and strength as organizations. The more people we represent, coupled with the more people we are able to activate (for voting, legislative advocacy, fundraising, etc.), is directly correlative to the power we have as organizations. An important part of the GOTV effort is to identify anyone and everyone who has ever been associated with your organization, and to put these records into one centralized database.

Next, we identify our members as voters through a process known as list enhancement. List enhancement is the first step in becoming a recognized voting block. List enhancement, described more in detail later in this article, is simply matching our membership lists against the public voter file. With the information we are able to gain through this process, we not only can identify our members who aren’t yet registered to vote, but we also know which of our members are not voting.

List enhancement information on our members is not just beneficial for GOTV efforts. As explained below, knowing voter histories of members also strengthens each organization in terms of fundraising capabilities, building a volunteer base, finding and developing board members, increasing turnout at events and rallies, and many other areas.

Upon reviewing an organization’s list of “frequent voters”, one Missouri state legislator admitted, “If I got a phone call from any of these people, and I know most of them already, I would not only consider changing my vote, I would get on the phone with them directly.” List enhancement means accountability, and accountability means power.

WHAT
List Enhancement is the process of matching your membership list against these 5 resources:

This match gives you the voter registration status of each member, and a voter history dating back at least 4 major elections. This means that you will know how many times each member has voted, and in which elections.

Almost everyone who moves from one residence to another files an NCOA form at their post office. This match gives you updated address information on all consumers based on the most accurate records at the Post Office (at least 95% accurate). You can catch up with many people who have fallen out of touch with your organization.

This match will update and find your members’ phone numbers (usually 70% of the names).

This match will give you local, state and federal legislative districts for each of your members.

In some circumstances, email addresses for some of your consumers can be obtained for many of your consumers.

WHY

To do GOTV without doing list enhancement is largely ineffective. By accounting for voters we are able to bring knowledge of our voting block to a legislator.

The list match will show you who among your members are not registered to vote, along with an updated phone number and address, which allows us to target and register members to vote. Experience tells us that more than half of people with disabilities are not even registered to vote.

Since the list enhancement shows you how often your members vote and in which elections, you can target messages and voter contacts in order to most effectively increase voter turnout. For instance, instead of calling people who vote often, you can target limited resources and volunteer time toward people who traditionally are not as likely to vote, thus increasing turnout. In a non-presidential election, when turnout is lower, you can focus more contacts on “dropoff voters” (people who tend to vote in presidential elections, but not off-year elections). If you want especially high voter turnout in a specific primary election, you can develop an effort around people who vote in general elections, but not primaries.

Frequent voters are people who have voted three or four times in the most recent four important elections (currently, those elections are the primary and general of 2000, and the primary and general of 2002). Identifying frequent voters among your membership can strengthen your organization in many ways:

What history and the experience of other constituencies, as well as that of the Missouri Disability Vote Project, shows us is that frequent voters are the most likely to respond to a call to action. This action can be in the form of helping with the GOTV phone bank, volunteering time, donating time or money, calling a legislator, writing letters to the editor, and other actions fundamental to advocacy organizations. They are dependable, engaged in the community, empowered to act on political or legislative advocacy, and knowledgeable about issues.

With an enhanced list, legislative advocacy becomes an exact science. You can identify your members who are constituents of key legislators. In addition, you can identify members who live in particular districts and are frequent voters, meaning that there is a stronger likelihood that these members will call their legislators to voice an opinion.

There is no question that a large, engaged membership makes for a powerful, respected organization. Using the information received through list enhancement, you can identify opportunities to develop members. For instance, infrequent voters can be contacted and developed into frequent voters, thus expanding your volunteer, fundraising and legislative advocacy base.

HOW
List enhancement is contracted out through a private vendor. The vendor is paid to match lists against certain criteria for all sorts of reasons. The vendor signs a confidentiality agreement stating that they will not keep or use the membership lists once they have completed the project.

Typically, through a contract with the vendor, organizations convert their membership databases into a text file or Microsoft excel file, and those files are emailed to the vendor. Once the vendor has completed the match, the lists are emailed back to the respective organizations. An entire program will cost between $3,000-8000. The size of the list is irrelevant to the cost. Organizations can share the cost and while maintaining the confidentiality of their lists.

WHEN
Exact dates vary, depending upon the vendor contract and election timelines. The most important times to do list enhancement are before a voter registration deadline, just before an important election, and after the election (to see the results of the GOTV effort). In order to turn out the greatest number of voters, identifying and registering nonvoters needs to take place at least 2 to 3 months before the date of the election. Once voter registration closes, the list should be updated again. It is a good idea to do frequent matches to update addresses.

List enhancement is a critical tool in maximizing organizational resources, among them, Get Out the Vote campaigns. This process gives us the capacity as organizations to turn advocacy into science and to measure our political effectiveness. If taking your advocacy to the next level is important to you, call us at AAPD. To find out more about list enhancement and private vendors, contact AAPD at 202-457-0046.

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