Vote Anita!

Midterm Elections

We helped Anita Malik’s campaign in the 6^th Congressional District organize a postcard operation that led to the writing of nearly 30,000 postcards to voters. The Malik campaign embraced postcard writing, not just using it as a tool for volunteer engagement but incorporating it into their overall strategy as a tactic equal to door-knocking, phone calls and direct mail. We also helped the Malik campaign increase visibility by organizing volunteers to attend or table community events.

We also worked with educators who were fighting the ballot initiative to expand school vouchers, helping them schedule their election day polling place staffing across the state.

The bulk of our work this Fall was with volunteers in the 8^th Congressional District including Legislative Districts 21 and 22, to help turn out voters for the entire Democratic ticket. We used this opportunity to carry out several experiments to test the impact of hand-written postcards and hand addressed letters.

Postcard Experiments

One reason people are hesitant to adopt postcard writing as a serious campaign strategy is the lack of solid data demonstrating their impact. We did not expect dramatic results from our experiments. In fact, we expected no impact at all, given that these voters were the recipients of dozens of pieces of mail as well as endless calls, door knocks and TV ads. It would be impressive if any one piece of mail were to have any measurable impact. Here is what we found!