It’s only June and UUSM’s UU the Vote team has already mailed 4,000 postcards encouraging voters to participate in the Georgia and Virginia primaries. Amazing! With 6 months to go until the November election, we’ve got tremendous momentum. It’s so satisfying to take these early, highly impactful steps that encourage voters who might not participate otherwise.
Update: We successfully raised $2,610, which is being matched three-to-one by a Spirit Level grant. That gives us more than $10K for… More stamps! More labels! More postcards!
We turn our attention to North Carolina
We are now working on the North Carolina campaign to get out the vote in November, the “Pledge to Vote” campaign. This campaign encourages voters to get involved early:
- Learn about candidates and issues
- Send postcards, knock on doors, and make phone calls to get information to voters
- Become poll watchers
- And most important: check voter registration for yourself, and your friends, family, and neighbors.
According to the League of Women Voters, “In addition to periodically updating voter rolls to account for deaths, changes of address, and ineligibility due to felony convictions, North Carolina has also removed more than 570,000 names in 2019 and almost 400,000 more in 2021 as part of its biennial list maintenance process.”
This is the first year requiring photo ID for in-person voting in the state, and a photocopy of a photo ID included with mail-in voting (that’s in addition to two witnesses or a notary public!). Plus, any ballot received by mail after election day will not be counted, regardless of postmark.
Where voter suppression is a factor, minority and low-income communities are impacted the most.
North Carolina will provide 16 Electoral College votes in 2024. That’s a lot! According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, in 2020, of the 7,359,798 eligible voters, turnout was at 75.35%. That’s a higher turnout than in the past, but still 1.8 million not voting.
Postcarding works!
Handwritten postcards encourage the act of voting in the face of voter suppression. According to Reclaim Our Vote, in Onslow, NC, in 2019, only 3% of Black voters who were cut from the rolls re-registered before being contacted. After receiving a postcard, 26% of Black voters re-registered. It seems they just needed a nudge. Or it’s the personal touch.
So this is our chance to make a meaningful difference. Our current team of postcarders is doing great, and we’re having some fun with feel-good postcarding meetups.
But more volunteers means more voters! Come visit the UU the Vote table on Sundays before and after service and pick up a packet of 20 postcards with all the supplies and instructions. Or, let us know how many postcards we can drop off to you or your group.
