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Mobilize the Immigrant Vote Toolkit for Movement Building Electoral Organizing
Our MIV toolkit is currently out of print, but the following are key sections that can help support immigrant organizations in planning and implementing electoral strategies. This Toolkit was compiled from materials developed and adapted by PILA. Moreover, the overall approach comes to us from Californians for Justice and the Western States Center.
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encourage users of this Toolkit to reproduce, adapt and share the enclosed
material but we ask that you do so according to the guidelines set out by the
Creative Commons Deed; Attribute (you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor), Noncommercial (for noncommercial use only), Share Alike (any alterations, transformations, or if you build on this work you can distribute under license identical to this one). For more
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 Movement-building electoral organizing, what is it?
To download the toolkit by section in pdf format please click the following download links:
 PILA MIV Toolkit Introduction
PILA MIV Tookit Section 1
PILA MIV Toolkit Section 2
PILA MIV Toolkit Section 3a
PILA MIV Toolkit Section 3c
PILA MIV Toolkit Section 4
PILA MIV Toolkit Section 5
Below are the toolkit sections and tool attachments in downloadable Word format documents:
1. PLANNING
A
fundamental goal of movement-building electoral organizing is that it is part
of a long-term strategy for strengthening your organization and your
community. There is no
one-size-fits-all approach to doing such work.
Therefore, to engage in electoral work in a way that is truly strategic
for your organization, developing a plan particular to the capacity and needs
of your organization is critical. The
plan doesn’t need to be elaborate (though, for some organizations, that may be appropriate), but it does need to be thoughtful and grounded in some reflection bout your own organization’s mission and long-term goals. By initially investing the time to craft an
intentional plan for your organization’s electoral organizing activities, you
may both save your organization from over-extending itself during election
season, as well as maximize the long-term benefit of the work you choose to do.
This
section provides a variety of tools to support your organization’s overall
planning process. Because we have found
that concrete examples often help make abstract concepts more understandable
and relevant, you will find that we have provided throughout this section
sample plans that provide an outline of specific activities that an
organization might choose to do. Please
remember that what is outlined is often a range of activities that could go
into a full campaign plan. Not all
organizations will have the capacity to take on such a full range of
activities. We encourage your
organizations to selectively choose and create activities that will increase
voter participation in your community, but more importantly, that will support
your long-term goals.
Tools
in this section include:
This chart clarifies the
long-term goals of the movement-building approach to elections by comparing
specific elements to a more traditional approach to elections.
Guidelines for Non-Profits Engaging in Electoral Work
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This is a set of guidelines to help 501(c)3
organizations begin to clarify some of the legal and other limitations on
electoral organizing that you will need to consider as you are developing your
plan.
This overview outlines and
generally describes various movement-building electoral strategies. In addition, this overview provides some
suggestions as to when during election season is best to plan on doing such
activities.
Even though movement-building
electoral organizing prioritizes long-term goals that strengthen and build your
organizations and communities, that doesn’t mean the activities don’t also
increase electoral participation in the short-term! In fact, all the strategies we describe in
the overview can do both. This chart
illustrates how.
PILA developed this worksheet
for participants in the MIV 2004 California Campaign. We recommend that organizations that have few
resources to dedicate to a more developed electoral campaign use this worksheet
as a guide to both brainstorm and develop your plan for election season. This one worksheet contains key general
questions to consider while you are planning, as well as specific examples of
activities and measurable outcomes.
For participants in PILA’s
more intensive, long-term MIV capacity building programs, we created a series
of tools to assist participants in developing a more elaborate electoral
workplan. This worksheet can be used to
guide your staff and core leaders through a key first step of developing a full
campaign: collectively brainstorming the
various electoral, leadership development and organizational goals your
organization would like to realistically reach during your electoral campaign.
This provides an example of
what a detailed, more extensive electoral workplan might look like.
Modeled on the above sample
plan, this provides a worksheet staff and community leaders of your electoral
campaign can use to develop a detailed plan for your organization. Note that it is less important that the
goals, activities, outcomes, etc. are articulated in a uniform or standard
way…and more important that the plan provides a common language and set of
expectations that all key leaders with the responsibility of implementing the
plan can understand and are invested in.
No matter what the scope of
your electoral activities, they will all almost certainly depend on having
volunteers to implement them. This worksheet is a guide to help you plan for
your volunteer needs.
Again, volunteers will be a
key component of almost ANY set of electoral activities your organization
chooses to take on. This tool provides a
ton of advice on recruiting, training and supporting them.
If your organization is
planning to focus on leadership development during election season, this
worksheet “audit” can help you identify the strengths of your current leaders,
how to support their ongoing development, and the organizational challenges
that need to be addressed or at least taken into consideration in order to
further your leadership development goals.
Part of planning what and how
you will do the basic elements of your electoral organizing will be considering
how you will document all that you do.
Documentation should not be a chore you do for its own sake. Like the
planning process, the documentation process should itself be used to further
your short-term and long-term goals.
This tool is intended to guide you through understanding the potential
role of documentation in your electoral work plan.
Follow-up with your contacts
throughout the campaign is key to ensuring voters turn out at the polls on
Election Day. PILA developed this sheet
as ONE example of how an organization might consider centralizing contact
information and tracking multiple contacts they have with individual voters. Maintaining good records of the voters you
contact is also crucial if you plan to “match” the list of the voters you
contacted with the county’s voter rolls after the election to measure the
turnout rate.
This is an example of one way
to track the kinds and numbers of activities you do, and the impact of each of
them.
This tool provides a series
of questions to guide your organization in reflecting on and evaluating your
electoral work and its impact.
Compiled
from direct experience of PILA’s CBO partners, this one pager will summarize
lessons you can carry forward when planning your own electoral activities.
2. VOTER REGISTRATION
Voter registration is a key activity in any electoral
campaign, expanding the potential pool of voters who can make their voices
heard on Election Day. For every ten
immigrants who are eligible to vote, approximately six have registered. That means about 40% of eligible immigrant
voters still need to register! Once they
are registered, research shows new citizens are more likely to show up at the
ballot box than native-born citizens who are registered to vote. So, concerted registration outreach efforts
can make a big difference in bringing new voters from our communities into the
electoral process.
Anxiety about an unfamiliar political process and lack of
language-accessible materials and education may deter many new potential voters
from immigrant communities. Community organizations have a vital role to play
in breaking down these barriers – outreach and assistance from a trusted source
can make the difference between someone deciding to register or not! For all
these reasons, we strongly encourage you to include some level of registration
activities in your electoral work.
Registration can happen anytime, but focused voter
registration efforts are more effective leading up to a specific election, and
generally take place in the two months prior to the registration deadline,
which in California is 15 days prior to Election Day. In the movement-building electoral context,
registration activities are also a key way your organization can begin to raise
visibility within your community about your electoral activities and your
ongoing work. While registering voters,
you can share information about your organization, recruit volunteers, and
build your list of new voters to follow up with for voter education and GOTV
activities closer to the Election. The
tools in this section will help you plan your registration activities, educate
your staff and volunteers about the voter registration process, and provide concrete
suggestions for how to connect your registration activities to your voter
education and mobilization efforts, and to your ongoing work.
Tools in this section
include:
This overview sheet provides key information on registration
eligibility and guidelines on registering voters. In addition, it walks you through the voter
registration form step-by- step to ensure you understand how to fill the form
out correctly. Use this to educate your
staff and campaign team and/or as a handout to train your volunteers.
Sample Voter Registration Card from Secretary of State
Secretary of State
Every county’s voter registration card may look a little
different, but they all request the same basic information. The instructions provided in the Voter
Registration Basics sheet refer to this sample card from the CA Secretary of
State.
If your organization plans to register more than 50 voters,
you must fill out and turn in a Statement of Distribution at your county’s
Registrar of Voters. Again, each
county’s form may look a little different, but they request the same
information as this sample from the CA Secretary of State.
Ensuring all your volunteers, community leaders, and staff
understand the voter registration process is key. This tool is for staff or key campaign
leaders to refer to as you plan a training activity to prepare volunteers for
registration activities.
To use registration activities in support of our
organization’s ongoing goals, it is crucial to develop a strong message, or
“pitch” to use in your outreach. Why should people register? Why does their vote matter? How can they connect to your organization’s
ongoing work? This worksheet provides a
sample pitch and can be used to develop and practice your own’ organization’s
pitch with key staff and volunteers.
This sheet has concrete tips for your staff and volunteers
to make the strongest voter registration pitch possible.
This tool contains a list of reminders for your campaign
team in planning effective voter registration activities.
Compiled from direct experience of PILA’s CBO partners, this
piece will give you concrete examples of successful voter registration
strategies. Review this for ideas to
maximize the overall effectiveness of your registration activities.
3. VOTER AND POLITICAL EDUCATION
In a movement-building approach, community education, at
some level, is a necessary part of the work.
It key to provide reliable, easy to understand information on the voting
process and issues on the ballot in languages spoken by our communities yields more informed, confident voters who
can share the information with others.
Creating space where community members can discuss the relevance and
impact of electoral issues also gives people an analysis experience that builds
their skills to make informed voting decisions in the future. Finally, voter education activities are a
great opportunity to deepen your relationships with community members and
connect them to your ongoing work.
Voter and political education can cover several areas: Voting mechanics and Rights, Political Education, and Issue Analysis. This section offers tools that will support you in all three
of the above areas of education. In
addition, the section starts with tools to help you plan your education
activities, generally.
Tools in this section include:
This chart outlines various voter education topics to cover
in your voter education activities, and lists suggested resources in this
Toolkit and elsewhere, to help you prepare.
There are a lot of components to juggle when planning a
voter education activity. This tool
lists out many of these different components with explanations of what to consider
with each one.
There are many, many ways to develop an agenda for a
community voter education form. This is
an example of one agenda scenario.
This worksheet can be used to plan your own educational
forum agenda.
This is a handout you can distribute during your community
education activities that outlines the rights that voters have when they go to
vote.
Organized with questions on one side and answers on the
other, this is a voting quiz that can be the outline for a voter education
game, then used as a handout that participants can take home.
Who Votes in California?
This exercise, in two variations, interactively illustrates
the disparity between who votes in California and who lives in California, with
questions to guide discussion on the impact of that disparity…and how it can be
changed!
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Variation 1
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Variation 2 Overview - 3.9_who_votes_variation_2_overview_english 53.50 Kb
Variation 2
Facilitator Instructions - 3.10_who_votes_variation_2_facilitator_instructions_english 56.00 Kb
Handout - 3.11_who_votes_handout_english 78.50 Kb
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Adapting Who Votes
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U.S. Voting Rights
Timeline
This exercise provides several useful tools and ideas to
engage community members in a consideration of the interconnection between
voting rights and other social justice struggles and to reflect on lessons for
current electoral work. Along the way,
there are lots of interesting facts to learn about the history of immigrant
rights, voting rights and the histories of particular communities.
Issue Analysis
Exercise
Through consideration and discussion of
any one of three scenarios, this exercise helps groups analyze the root causes
of problems low-income immigrant communities face daily and builds analytic
skills, generally.
Ballot Analysis Exercise
This exercise suggests various ways to engage in analysis of
the potential impact of ballot initiatives on immigrant communities.
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Facilitator
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Sample Agendas - 3.27_ballot_analysis_instructions_sample_agendas_english 62.00 Kb
Sample Backgrounder
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Sample Backgrounder
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This tool describes possible means for making the connection
between analysis of specific ballot initiatives to root cause analysis….and
engagement in ongoing, non-electoral activities.
This provides a compiled list of tips and lessons learned
from the direct experience of PILA CBO partners.
4. VOTER MOBILIZATION
The
final four days before an election are the last push. To ensure potential
voters show up at the polls on Election Day, they need to be reminded! Get out the vote (GOTV) activities are a
proven cornerstone in effective elections campaigns, and are especially
critical when mobilizing first-time or infrequent voters. Long held by
experienced organizers as a core strategy, one-on-one contact through phone
calls or an in person visit is considered the most effective form of
outreach. Research on electoral
mobilization shows that one-on-one contact from a trusted source, especially
from peers who share a common language, makes this kind of outreach even more
effective, and can substantially increase voter turnout![1]Again,
immigrant-serving CBOs and their volunteers are ideally positioned to increase
voter participation in their communities through this kind of
mobilization. But remember, in a
movement-building electoral campaign, GOTV contacts are not just about getting
people to the polls or moving voters to support specific issues. They also provide an opportunity to continue
to raise visibility for your organization and build an ongoing relationship
with each contact for future organizing.
Voter
mobilization or GOTV activities generally take place on the Saturday, Sunday
and Monday right before the election, and often continue through Election Day
itself. The key GOTV activities we cover
in this section are one-on-one contact through phone-banking and door-knocking. The tools we share here should help you plan
your GOTV activities, develop your message, and train your volunteers.
Tools in this section include:
This overview sheet provides reminders and ideas setting up a successful phone-banking activity.
Though
many preparation steps for door-to-door GOTV activities are the same as for
phone-banking, there are some key differences.
This sheet is for your planning team to refer to when organizing your
door-knocking activities.
This
worksheet provides a sample checklist of materials and preparation required for
a variety of GOTV activities. Use this
with your planning team to determine what activities you will focus on, and to
review the resources you’ll need to do it.
Preparation
and practice is key to ensuring your staff and volunteers make the most of GOTV
contacts. This tool is for staff or key campaign leaders to refer to as you
plan a training to prepare volunteers for a phone-banking activity. You can refer to this sample also when
planning a door knocking training. Many
of the same key elements apply.
To use
mobilization activities in support of your organization’s ongoing goals, it is
crucial to develop a strong message, or “pitch” to use in your outreach. Why should
people vote on Election Day? How can
they connect to your organization’s ongoing work? This worksheet provides a sample pitch and
can be used to develop and practice your own organization’s pitch with key
staff and volunteers.
You may
also want to develop a specific script for your staff and volunteers to use
during calls or door-to-door visits.
This sheet provides a sample script for you to draw on.
Compiled
from direct experience of PILA’s CBO partners, this piece will give you
concrete examples of successful GOTV strategies. Review this for ideas to maximize the overall
effectiveness of your mobilization activities.
5. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Here’s what PILA Partners say about the usefulness of the tools:
I used PILA’s materials all the time during election season, from voter registration to mobilization. I would have been lost and overwhelmed without these materials. — Ed Valladares, Filipinos for Affirmative Action
The multi-lingual worksheets and handouts make it possible for all our community leaders to participate in the planning and implementation of our electoral activities. — Alex Tom, Chinese Progressive Association
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