Registering Democratic-leaning voters in Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties may be the most important thing we can do to win the 2024 election for President Biden. Visit our voter registration trips page and sign up for a trip of your choice.
Studies indicate that in a presidential election year, 85-93% of newly registered people actually vote. Wow!
Unregistered people often are members of demographics which tend to vote Democratic–young people, people of color, unmarried women. If we can register these folks and give them basic information, they are likely to vote with us. We can also target regions where people are likely to favor Democrats, and we can use techniques that make us more likely to register people who will vote blue.
Research has shown that almost one-quarter of the U.S. population is either missing or erroneously identified in voter roles and marketing lists. Further, these effectively “unreachable” people lean heavily Democratic. So while remote registration outreach techniques such as mail and phone remain important, in-person voter registration drives are the only practical strategy for reaching this large swath of otherwise-invisible likely-Democratic voters.
The majority of unregistered people say they have never been asked to register. In addition, millions of people try to register after the deadline. If we get to them before the deadline, we’re doing them (and the country) a favor.
Percentage turnout in 2020 was the highest since we adopted the secret ballot. High turnout diminishes the effect of Get-Out-The-Vote – since people are likely to vote anyway– but enhances the effect of voter registration – there are more people to vote, and they do. And we can do this work right now!
Phone calls, texts, and postcards / letters can serve as helpful reminders to people who need to register, or update their registrations.
But – lists of unregistered are both inaccurate and incomplete. Young people and people of color are significantly underrepresented on these lists.