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o'clock Central Time 8 Eastern. We'll go ahead and get started Welcome to the postcards to swing States postcard update and frequently Asked question. event First just quickly. I am Reid McCollum. my pronouns. Are he him. I am a program Outreach director for Progressive. Turnout project. originally from North Carolina live outside of Chicago. Um my wife and two daughters celebrated a birthday today older daughter turned 12, but I founded postcards to swing States and I've been our program Outreach director at Progressive turnout project for a couple years now, and before that I had a career selling widgets for 15 years, and I love I love I love door to door canvasing. I've probably knocked 12,000 doors since 2017 and it is one of my favorite things to do. So I'm looking forward to be doing that later this fall. We have Sue who is monitoring the chat and we already have almost 800 people on the call and we're expecting over a thousand to join so Sue's going to be doing your best to monitor the chat. She will answer some questions there. But please bear with us. Mostly I'll share on the next slide sort of how you can contact us with with questions. that will answer after tonight's call. So this is the agenda. I'm going to provide. An overview of progressive turnout project and our postcards between six program have some really exciting updates that I'm excited to share about the progress towards the states that you can see in in the image behind me where we're sending postcards and also I mean to announce the house districts where we're going to be adding to our postcard program this year in just a couple weeks and then the questions that I'll answer the themes of those questions are around sort of the effectiveness. not only of postcards but how postcode rating compares to other forms of voter contact like door to door canvasing phone banking text messaging how to think about the best use of your time. Also just some basic tactical questions that we get a lot about sort of stamps, especially when you're trying to buy those before the prices go up mailing dates our messages all sorts of stuff. So how do we have confidence that everything that we do not just at post courage to swing States but in the Democratic Progressive Movement is Active and then you know, we're gonna end with sort of an exciting little short video. We made really for folks that maybe have never done door to a canvasing before it's not for everybody. But there's so many Grassroots groups out there that that might have numbers where that's an option. And so one of our goals is to make it easy for folks who have never done that before but for whom it might be a good fit this fall to learn more Okay some quick housekeeping notes. I mentioned use the chat anytime you're using a chat. Obviously be respectful. I mentioned that there's no ability to raise your hand. We won't be able to keep up with all the questions Sue on our team is going to do a great job trying to stay on top of the chat as best as she can. If you have any issues with a postcard order if you've placed in order for postcards and something went wrong, or they haven't arrived yet and it's been weeks. This is what you should do is email us after the call at postcards at turnoutpack.org. We will we will figure that out. So rather than trying to get that trouble shooting in the chat tonight email us is the best way for us to respond and help get that sorted out if you want to order postcards maybe you don't know anything about us and you want to order them at the end of the call or if you were referred by a friend or if you want to make sure you have postcards before the debate next Thursday. We should be able to get them to you. hopefully by then if you place an order right away, and then tonight is A YouTube stream, so it's being recorded. It will live on our YouTube page that is the link to that YouTube page. And we will also send a follow-up email, but sometimes emails go to spam. So you'll you'll be able to find this recording there. I will also link the slide deck to the notes the description of this event after the event. So you'll be able to find these slides as a PDF document down the road. So feel free to just not take any notes. and listen in. So I wanted to start with just why I am. So optimistic. I got a chance to be a guest on a radio show up in Wisconsin the Earl Ingram show yesterday. And you know, I realized when I was thinking about tonight's presentation. I didn't really have anything about just why I'm so optimistic about the outcome. I mean, I'm you know, I'd say a practitioner political strategist at this point and sort of wanted to share a little bit of why there's so so much reason to be hopeful about the outcome of the of the election this fall, you know, and If you listen to a lot of podcasts you probably if you listen to good ones might have heard this before, but it is really true this year that the voters who will determine the outcome of this year's presidential election and really all of the key elections Senate races and house races. They're just not paying attention more folks than ever before are. Are intentionally avoiding political news. for good reason it's just it's a lot to follow it. And so many many millions of folks will pay attention and really think about voting and making up their mind in the final, you know month. if not weeks or days and and so, you know, there's so much work that we can do. over the next five months and pulls don't vote. You know, especially when somebody voters have not made up their minds. our actions really truly will determine the outcome. But also, I'm just optimistic about the entire campaign all of the democratic campaigns ability to sort of get the message out and connect with voters. This is the time to start doing that and you know, if the polls are close to even right now, I think we're really in a great position to to win the Senate to hold, you know flip the house hold the Senate and reelect President Biden and vice president Harris, so You know, you don't have to believe me because we've done that so Democrats have literally won or out over performed in every single election cycle since the orange man came to power for the first time. We just cannot let it happen again, but we've done so well, so do not let the media narratives Gaslight you into Despair and giving up the stakes could not be higher. but you know if we if we do the work we're gonna have the right outcome and it's it's up to us. So that's my little optimistic pep talk and so there's there's a rainbow and it's also pride month. So all right Progressive turnout project is the largest direct voter contact organization in the country. So we have the privilege to be a partner with organizations like Biden for president the campaign the DNC the d-tripc the dscc all of the democratic organizations that are that are making sure that that campaigns are coordinated. And run across the country. Our mission is is mobilization. So our focus at Progressive turnout project is reaching out and connecting to folks that if they vote are extremely likely to vote for Democrats. We were founded at a frustration that so much money just spent on TV and not enough having actual conversations directly reaching out to voters. and as an organization, we're going to invest over 30 million dollars this year. So I'll briefly touch on sort of our programs and then focus in on Postage and updates, you know else won't spend a lot of time on this slide, but we have a flexible paid door-to-door canvassing program that will be running this fall in, Arizona. George in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. It's a great program. It's a contractor-based model where folks can make a hundred and twenty-five dollars for every canvas list. It takes about three hours. So those are the six sort of vital swing states that we have to win and that's a multi-million dollar investment to do that campaign fellows is a program that puts a paid campaign staffer who knocks doors and organizes volunteers on key Federal but also State ledge and state senate campaigns and in many states across the country the competitive campaigns where a lot of times there may not be anybody paid to help get out the vote and knock doors. We do a paid relational organizing program that in cities and swing States reaches out to folks that are not necessarily closely engaged in politics, but then pays them to reach out to trust as a trust in Messenger to their friends and family and acquaintances who would likely vote for Democrats. to break through sort of just that you know, it's it's so hard to reach folks anymore and then we'll talk about postcards. So these are sort of The Suite of programs that Progressive turnout project that are that are caught our strategy of winning and mobilizing Democrats. All right. We have 1300 people on the call tonight. So that is just I'm Blown Away. Thank you all so much for spending your your Tuesday evening here. So how it started in my kitchen in the suburbs of Illinois as a volunteer project in in my garage in the garage of my Co-founder. who's a hand and wrist surgeon and she lives in Michigan now and was instrumental in helping us get the program off the ground with a lot of Volunteers in the neighborhood. who are many of whom still help volunteer. with packing postcards for us. So 2020. We had over a hundred thousand folks right 21 million postcards. I was a volunteer everybody was a volunteer, but we got some funding from Progressive turnout project. We became part of progressive. China project at the beginning of 2021. How it's going now is we've had volunteers across the country right over 52 million postcards since 2020. So, this is our current Warehouse we have one location. It's staffed by volunteers and a few team members that that pack up shipments of postcards that bottom foot is about three million postcards. So that gives you some perspective of the huge Collective action that we're all part of this year. It's more handwritten messages to voters in any other organization by far, you know, because we provide free postcards we want to make it as easy as possible for you to have the Maximum Impact that you can have. so we mail you free postcards along with already printed voter lists and instructions so you don't have to print anything at home. Your commitment is really the postage. We'll talk more about stamps later, But also just the time to write the postcards and to recruit friends and to help you. We also like to give people a lot of time to write postcards because it's such a great activity when it's 110 degrees in Arizona or in the evening or when you're watching the debate or when you just have you know, five minutes a day when you're making dinner to do your your daily bit of activism. I'm not everybody has five hours on a weekend where they can get out there or travel to a swing state. So it's it's the most accessible way to make a difference and it really does All right the program that's up and running now is to send postcards to these 11 states and these are presidential Battleground States swing States. And then the key Senate race States across the country. So we have key Senate races in Montana with John tester shared Brown and in Ohio. We're also rating postcards for the Senate races in Texas and for Florida, and then the upstates are just vital Battlegrounds, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and, North Carolina. these are the postcard designs that you can see right behind me. So these are the the free postcards that we send. and this is the progress so This is how far we are towards the goal of sending two postcards to every single likely Democratic voting household in each of these states. I'll talk about the mailing and and the research that goes into Windows you may waves of postcards will be sent. So we're doing just one way of to start at least for Texas and Florida, but for the other states here you can see Montana. We've already finished two waves of postcards to Montana. It's it's a fairly small state in terms of this population. So don't feel like you need to agonize or memorize this if you sign up for more postcards there's an option when you sign up to select where where most needed and that gives us a ton of buffer to make sure that we can you know, make sure that states that like Ohio, which is lagging a little bit behind. get caught up. So All right in terms of the house races, so I'm really excited to announce that you all the first folks to learn this. We are adding all 56 of these house races to our postcard program starting on July 9th. Now these are all house races in states that are all that are not already receiving postcards. So there are absolutely key competitive Congressional races and States like, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina. are in those States is already getting postcards. no matter where they live. So we are adding house districts that are in other states of California, Illinois, New York. You can read them on here. There's there's sort of many states on this list the message options and the postcard designs are still the same. So the for all of the house districts, it's it's a postcard design. Let me flip back to it. so you can actually see it. it's this bottom right America votes, So that is our house district postcard that you'll get if you sign up specifically for any of those house districts and when you sign up for the house program you will get to pick from a drop-down. Which district you want to write for You'll also be able to sort of say wherever it's most needed and then we'll assign you one of these districts so that'll be how that works. It will be a separate order form, but you will also find it from our turnout pack.org slash postcards website in emails will have a link that goes straight to that order form. it's a separate actual order form from the one that we have for the the Statewide program. so there will be two places that you can order postcards. Starting July 9th. and when you add up the 11 states plus the 26 million postcards or sorry plus the house districts it totals 26 million postcards and the reason that this fund will graphic is pointing towards five tractor trailers is that is literally the space that 50 the 26 million postcards takes up. It is five tractor trailers full of postcards and if you saw my teaser on social media about whether the postcards would fill up an olympic size swimming pool the answer is it depends on if there's a deep end and if we're stacking postcards, but but they would take up exactly five tractor trailers, so we're gonna start talking about some of the questions that come up and this is where a lot of the meat meat and potatoes is for the for the presentation tonight So this is a little word cloud in terms of the How common these themes are in terms of the questions that we get from our volunteers all over the country. So we get questions about stamps the best use of your time or is writing postcards a good use of your time, You know, the stakes are so high you have a limited amount of time. What should you be doing mailing dates? You know, how do we land on? Those are they too late? what you know, why don't we send them earlier the message options? you know, that's a big one in terms of the three message options that we give you on the instructions and they're just really how effective our postcards but also so I get I get frustrated that we as a progressive data. Club of Geeks don't necessarily share out to volunteers. They're so important in the Grassroots how we know what works in general about all forms of mobilizing the key voters to inform you, you know to give you more confidence in what we know and and to help expose areas where we don't know as much and and need more research to close a lot of holes in terms of our knowledge. So we'll start with stamps because it's it's tactical and you know, very straightforward so postcard stamps, right now if you go to the Post Office and buy stamps a postcard stamp cost 53 cents the last day that you can buy postcard stamps for 53 cents is July 3rd team, July 13th on July 14th Postcard stamps. go up three cents to 56 cents. a normal postcard stamp says postcard on it. It does not have a cash value on it just says postcard. those barns or seashells or Flags hold their value forever. They are the same as forever stamps in that you can use them five years from now if it says postcard on it it is valid to mail a postcard in the United States. forever now if you go to the Post Office, and it's closed and there's a kiosk that sells stamps. I would avoid it because it will sell you a ugly looking thing that says 53 cents on it, which is not a postcard stamp and we'll not be enough to mail a postcard after after July 13th. The easiest way to buy postcards is really just USPS.com from the Postal Service website. The actual post office is hold a limited value of stamps. They may or may not have enough but you know, feel free to buy them from your local post office the thing you don't want to do though is buy them from any website that claims to have a discount on postcard stamps. claiming some sort of bulk discount those are counterfeit. They are they're not legitimate if you are seeing something that says you can get 20% off of off postcard stamps or forever stamps. It is a scam. I you know, I didn't put a link in here because it's a slide, but just Google counterfeit stamps and you will find articles they're becoming more and more prevalent these scams. and you know if you have potentially already bought counterfeit stamps proceed with caution. It is possible that they will still deliver your postcard or your mail. rather than you being out hundreds and hundreds of dollars, but definitely you don't want to go buy counterfeit stamps. So All right. what do we know about the effectiveness? And I'm gonna go real broad here before we hone in on postcards because the context is really so important. You know to know what's effective we have to measure what what works and we are not a siled organization trying to figure that out in the darkness by ourselves with handwritten postcards. There is a wealth of knowledge. Really they're hit for 15 to 20 years there have been organizations that have done rigorous statistical randomized controlled experiments to measure the effectiveness of direct voter contact. We know a lot about mobilization getting boosting turnout because the outcome of whether somebody voted or not is something we can directly look at in the voter file. So it is straightforward to create a control group of people that don't receive things like postcards and then a treatment group of people that do in large numbers and then compare the statistical significantly compare. what percentage of the control group voted what percentage of the treatment group voted and then you can measure the impact of your Intervention, which is sending postcards in our case, but it can be for door-to-door canvassing. sending text messages. and the organization called the analyst Institute is really for folks that work in politics that understand political data. It is the organization that we all turn to that is both the Clearing for almost all of the scientific statistically rigorous experimentation in terms of direct voter contact, but also in organization that puts together meta-analyzes best practice guides that campaign professionals and strategists at organizations across the country on the left rely on it's a members only organization. So that Republicans can't just immediately find out what's effective. it's free to join, but you have to have an email. that is a political or Progressive nonprofit. organization so you cannot join it with your Gmail and those of us, who are members are not able to share directly their guides, but I want you to know that it exists. It has been a wealth of knowledge. It's a Clearing House of data, and it's so powerful. So we are starting point is following. what the analyst Institute recommendations. are we've published our research there. We read all of the research of other organizations, and so it just I want you to know that that's a thing that so and then Also a great book that's on its fifth in fifth edition called get out the vote by professors Donald green and Alan Gerber who were the first academics to do rigorous statistical experiments measuring direct voter contact working with campaigns that would help share data and set up experiments for them. one quote from the latest edition. Is there meta-analysis of 15 public-facing studies suggests that handwritten postcards generate an average of one vote every 71 postcards. It's about three times as effective as conventional get out the mail so they actually cite our large postcard experiment from the midterms in their fifth edition. So that was that was exciting, but that's a book that you can buy and I recommend reading it if you're really interested in learning more about direct voter contact messaging Frameworks, like social pressure how different modes of reaching voters like door to door canvassing phone. thinking male compared to one another that's one of the first books that I read. And what was the Third Edition at the time back in 2017? So what works to boost turnout this this is probably the key slide because what I'm going to do is essentially summarize the the lessons that both get at the vote and the analyst Institute chair from 15 to 20 years of rigorous data and meta-analysis and best practices and seminars and conventions. messages that focus on voting rather than candidates political parties or issues for mobilizing voters for boosting turnout messages that focused on voting are the most effective tactic to boost turnout doesn't mean that you can't craft a message that talks about issues to boost turnout you can it doesn't mean that we should never communicate about candidates to voters. Of course we should but in the strategy of how we win elections the phase that's called get out the vote at the end is when programs like our postcard program are most effective if they focus on messages that they talk about voting of those message Frameworks that talk about voting one called social pressure is overwhelmingly and really always the most effective. It's been measured hundreds of times in every context recently in the past on handwritten postcards other forms of mail door to door canvas saying, social pressure in general emphasizes that voting is is a is a positive thing so as Citizens you know, many of us feel like oh we want to fit in be part of the group. It's actually our tribal psychology is to is to want to be part of the in-group to do what's expected of us and to emphasize the social Norm that voting is a good thing like, thank you for doing that is a form of social pressure. So That shaming it's not you know threatening people. It's really just sort of saying like, you know as humans we want to do. what's good and voting is good and taking something that might be a very private act and be like no it's it's a public thing. We're all in this together, you know, and who you vote for is totally private. So, you know feel good about it, and it's it's the most effective framework. It's not the only effective framework. I'll talk about others. and then in terms of modes And by mode, I mean things like mail phone calls knocking doors. sending text messages, you know, they all have their pros and cons. There's not one tactic to reach voters. That's that's quote unquote better. There's Concepts like can you scale it up? And is it cost effective? Will it reach really, you know voters that are hard to reach a different way and there are you know, many folks that live in areas where we just cannot talk to them at their doors. They live in apartments nursing homes, extremely rural areas. They don't feel comfortable answering the door. They work during schedules where we're not knocking doors. They work the night shift their sleep during the day very few people answer the phone anymore, you know text messages can reach a lot of people male can reach everybody, but it's not a face to face conversation. So rather than obsessing about which mode you know, I like to think about it in terms of the hours of activism that you can put in and that makes all the difference, but I'll Circle back to this and talk a little bit more about the pros and cons of these different modes and what we know from the data later on. Timing matters when we're reaching voters is really important for a get out the vote program. It's only really effective when people can take action taking action can be requesting a mail ballot in many states not everywhere taking action can be early in person voting. you know, stay like New Hampshire where it's pretty much the only time to vote is on Election Day. That's a much shorter window for when when get out the vote is really effective. all of the voter contact that we that we do has a Decay affect meaning if we talk to somebody in April. it's less effective than it would be. you know late October or just a few days before election day if they haven't voted yet. That's just a reality that has even has a concept in the data called geotv Decay or get out the vote Decay. So, you know, that's that's an important Concept in terms of the timing of voter contact. There's never a bad time to to reach out to voters. There are very important strategic things that we can be doing right now. voter registration deep canvassing staying in touch community-based organizations reaching out like it is often way too late. if we only show up in the final weeks before the election. you know, and making sure that that your friends and family and your neighbors know what Democrats have been doing this whole time while they've been ignoring politics and how they're going to be the ones that bring cost. Living down is so essential and important but having them then act on all of that information and voting. is is really essential in the final, you know month before the election. as an organization we as postgrades to swing states have done many large extremely large rigorous randomized controlled experiments. We've done the most in the largest experiments on postcards by Far We've tested 15 postcard messages in large experiments. We've measured postcards to a boost turnout by up to 1.3 percentage points to put that number into context if our postcards boost to turn out by 1.3 percentage points this year that would add 183,300 additional votes that might seem like a lot of votes but that is four times as many votes as determine the presidential election in favor of Joe Biden in 2020. So that's a big number our elections in this country are often Very close adding 183,000 votes would be tremendous. I don't know that our postcards will add that many the Electoral environment is the biggest factor in terms of how effective anything that we do is so when you see organizations highlight, really large numbers in terms of the effect of their program be aware that it is much easier to boost turnout. enormously in a special election and a primary election or even in a midterm election then in the presidential election so that election environment is the biggest driver in terms of how effective anything that we do as it's much more of a it's a bigger Factor than than the message and the messages a bigger Factor than the mode. So whether it's postcards versus letters or or phone calls, you know, the Electoral environment and then the script in sort of the the setup of the program are really huge drivers in terms of the effectiveness of that program. You can write postcards and write something on them that could actually suppress turn out and if you if you write with an organization that follows the data, then you're you know that what you're doing is adding value. We've won three analyst Institute XP Awards and collaborate with messaging experts like you're not chink or sorio and we publish everything that we've done. It's all on our website as well. You don't have to be remember the Allison statute to read our results there on our postcard program. I think you page as well. The instructions that we provide this year are the three message options that we are confident are the most effective things you can write on a postcard and I'm confident that our program is the most effective way that you can boost Democratic turnout without leaving your house. I truly am we've done so much experimentation to prove that over the years the first message option that we provide on the instructions is social pressure. It is measured to be 50% more effective than our other two message options. which we believe are the second and third most effective messages that you can write on a postcard. So that first message option is 50% more effective the analysis Institute recommend social pressure. Get out. The vote says the social pressures the most effective messaging framework. I've seen measurements of social pressure might be twice as effective as non-social pressure messages, but that's averaging out all of the other messages. That folks right. Thank you for being a voter is how all of our postcards start and that is actually social pressure, but it's just thinking them and it reinforces that idea. That voting is a good thing and that it's a Civic thing. that's public. and who you vote for is private whether you vote is public record, please vote in Tuesday. November 5th. It's a very short message the most effective thing you can put on a postcard to boost turnout the second and third message options are based on our really large midterm experiment. I pretty much identical in terms of their effectiveness to one another. So if you don't want to write the first message, which is totally fine don't agonize about whether you write the second or the third they're measured about the same so you know, reminding friends and family. and then What prompting voters to think about when they're going to vote in the election getting them to stop and just think about that is proven to be effective as well. So all these messages are about voting they don't talk about candidates. They don't talk about saving democracy. They don't talk about President by not because we have any restrictions legally we can say whatever we want on postcards. These are the most effective options. All right. This is bear with me on this graphic. So I'm gonna talk about when we nail postcards and this is sort of this is not State specific as a general thing. This is my attempt. I'll walk you through this graphic or this infographic so This top blue bar the light shade Blue Bar. think of that as for a particular State when a voter can request a mail ballot. So this would be obviously for a state where you can request a mail ballot without an excuse. So that's usually a fairly Long window. Again. This is a generic example, but think about as a Long window for when you can request a mail ballot. The darker Blue Bar below that it's labeled when you can vote early in person. So that usually, you know starts after the beginning of when you can request a mail ballot and it goes sometimes right up until election day in some states. There's a gap of a few days but again, you know, and then it always ends with election day every state November 5th is election day, So for our program, we're sending two postcards for all the states except for Florida in Texas the second mailing wave. So if you're if you're riding with us, you're not responsible for two mailing waves, you got one set of instructions You're just writing part of one of these nailing waves. Excuse me. Um, the second mealing way for every state is October 24th, which is plenty of time for those postcards to arrive. before election day because that postcard's goal is to boost turn out on Election Day. So the ideal day for it to arrive would frankly be like the Day before election day. We rigorously follow how long first class mail takes to deliver across the country and like 98% of first class mail including postcards deliver within eight to nine days and that would mean that almost all that's delivered in time for election day. The reason that we don't move that mailing date up even earlier just to guarantee that mail that gets lost or left behind doesn't arrive after election day is it would make the program overall far less effective, So, you know a very very tiny percentage of the postcards might arrive late usually because they become this sorted or something like that, but overall, you know, that's that's the best time to mail the postcards we are well aware of the issues going on at the postal service and delays and male carriers, you know, and all of the of the male goes to sorting facilities that are automated so you know that those delays are frankly really built into that buffer that we already have in the program. So otherwise we would mail them, you know several days later. So this this anticipates delays in mail. The first mailing wave and this is why I have this graphic here the ideal time to send that first postcode is when voters have Still two options. It'll we want the postcard to arrive ideally. when early voting has either just begun in person or or it's about to begin if it arrives earlier than when they can go and vote in person in the state where there is widespread early voting. It's just far less effective. So you know, not every state gives us this flexibility, but the ideal time would be when a voter receives that first postcard. they can go vote early early voting has started but there is still time for them to request a male ballot if that's the preferred way for them to to vote though, you know, if we had to pick if it's too late to request a mail about it then early in person voting is is overwhelmingly the best option in Most states. So this isn't one size fits all but this helps explain why when you look at our first mailing if you're writing the Pennsylvania, it's got an October 11th mailing date for Wisconsin and Michigan. It's the 17th. and then for all of the other states Georgia, Montana, North Carolina, Nevada and Ohio. It's the 15th of October. If we were to do some third mailing wave what I would have done in states that have flexible vote by mail rules is is sended a little bit earlier, but the other issue with going to early is that voters just know that the election isn't coming up. They've got a lot of time they get a postcard. They're like I got six weeks before the election. and they just recycle it and they don't even think about it. So, you know Well, you say well, that's why we send it but it just doesn't prompt action nearly as effectively and that's proved in data that if you start, you know, Pennsylvania's and like you can request mail ballots, I don't know maybe August and they start getting nailed in September like late September, but if you're mailing postcards to folks in September to get out the vote and prompt them to request meal ballots. They're just not going to be that effective you'd want to wait. until you know the salience of the election is sort of higher and people's mind. So it's it's counterintuitive because you think I want to get people as long as possible, but that's not happening. They're looking at the postcard for 15 seconds and it's going in the trash. Maybe it'll sit on there kitchen counter for a few days, but then it goes in the trash so, you know, it is not performing. It's task to remind them for a month It just isn't so you don't want to you don't want to send it too early. All right more more meat here the best use of your time so I mentioned this I gave away kind of the spoiler that I'm convinced that the most effective thing that you can do is think about which different modes and programs allow you to maximize your total hours of how much you can put into saving democracy and electing Democrats between now and November 5th, and that often doesn't mean just picking one thing for some folks. It means picking one thing but if you can write a lot of postcards, you know, I think Postcards is like they postcards can feel like all the gaps in your time. It's just right postcards until until you can't, you know do it anymore, but if you are able to do other things like virtual phone Banks from home are great if you haven't done door-to-door canvassing, I'm gonna play that recruitment video at the end of the call. you know, there's a lot of ways that you can that you can be active But if you're like thinking about well, I I do want to do whatever I can what is the most impactful thing is you don't have to just pick one thing. It's sort of the total number of hours that you can put into it as long as you are following programs that that are publishing their data that do rigorous work. that know what they're doing is effective this on having measured it and following best practices. Organizations are talking about the analysis to get out the vote if some of those slides that I shared earlier match kind of what a program is guiding you to do then that's a good thing again for mobileization and get out the vote, you know. So direct voter contact is the most effective closure to election day, you know, one of the things that's great about our postcard program is that you can be writing postcards in May and June July and August, but the effect of them is during that critical time frame close to the election. you were obviously dropping them in the mail in October. So you're sort of stockpiling hours of activism and then releasing that it's like a battery a shoe. full of postcards is like a battery of voter contact that you can then release and and you know drain that battery to Help elect Democrats when they went again when they can do the most to do that, so you know the same concept frankly is true if you're thinking about knocking doors if you can knock doors. like three times And that's all you can do the most effective three days to knock doors would be in the last like week before election day. If you can knock doors 60 times then you cannot knock 60. shifts of doors in three days so, you know you kind of get the concept is like there's a lot of important door knocking that can be happening. Now if people are able to get out there and do canvassing now. you know registering voters doing deep canvasing persuasion. really listening to voters is what folks are doing there because if we started to have conversations in >> Reid McCollum's Presentation: you >> Reid McCollum: June about have you thought about whether you're going to vote early or on Election Day that just would have no effect. So there are important tactics and things that you can do through every mode early, but in terms of if you just had like one thing that you could do and there was one day you'd want that day to be as close to the election as possible. So this sort of Yin and Yang here with my last advice which was to do as many hours as possible. It doesn't mean you don't like get Off The Hook by like, oh, he's like well, I'll just, you know volunteer on Election Day. It's like that's great if you can only volunteer one day but you want to maximize as many as many hours of activism as possible. I said this before but the message in the timing matter more than the mode so what you were saying to voters and how are you communicating it is is more effective than whether it's showing up in a letter and an envelope or on a postcard or you know in a phone call. So, you know knocking doors phone calls postcards are all part of a winning strategy, you know, we want to be able to count. It's harder and harder to really connect with voters. So you know the magic of door-to-door canvasing, is that when you have a face-to-face conversation with somebody not nothing is more effective than a face-to-face conversation, but you when you knock doors, you know. it's maybe 15% of the time does the person that you're trying to contact? both answer the, you know, answer the door and and end conversation with them. So that is what's called just like a scalability challenge. It's really hard to fully exhaust all of the door knocking opportunities that you would want. And so That's one reason that you hear so many campaigns asking folks to knock doors is that we just can't saturate door knocking whereas tv ads if you live in a key swing state like by the week before the election when you turn on the TV or YouTube or you know see digital ads on your phone like it just overwhelmingly saturated with the ads for for the election. So All right. I hope their sound here. Let me I have to click over to play this. >> Reid McCollum's Presentation: a world that seems peaceful and quiet you will face your darkest fears. Whatever you do don't look behind you. It's the mailman. In a town where something isn't quite right. when your own alone You know, this is concrete right things will never be come on. I'm just knocking doors. It's not that scary. Well, it's a little scary. sure. I was nervous at first, but now I got this but we'll show you how it's done. We've been volunteering for 15 years talking to voters is how we went. Talking to people and getting fresh air feels great the training took what 30 minutes and then we were ready to go. You'll get a script and whatever materials you need. You'll keep track of everything on an app on your phone. It's really easy to use. You'll go to specific homes on a list where we know that most voters are Democrats, but they may need a nudge to actually go vote so many elections come down to just a few votes. just asking them if they made a plan is so important. >> Reid McCollum: here >> Reid McCollum's Presentation: It really does make them more likely to vote a lot of potential voters need that personal connection to get past all the noise and negativity. Most folks are just busy and don't follow politics every day showing up and getting to think about voting sometimes all that. It takes an elder woman told me that she is gonna vote because I showed a Better Door no one ever knocked a door before Yeah, I feel like a lot of people are kind of scared or intimidated by it but it's way easier than I thought you don't need to be a policy expert or anything. It's just about making sure Democrats know when they plan to vote and giving them the right info and if you do run into a republican, they're usually nice and just tell you that data helps us know. who's who and then you don't have to go back to that house. I don't want to wake up the day after the election and wish I did more I never thought I'd knocked doors. But I asked myself. Am I doing everything I can to fight for my values following the polls just makes you feel helpless the polls don't vote. It's what we do that matters because I know that every time that I get out to knock doors we get a few more votes and it really adds up if I'm concerned about what's going on. if I really believe that democracy is under attack. I need to step up. So I did. I signed up. Come join us. We said yes knocking doors is one of the most important things I've ever done join us. >> Reid McCollum: a friend of mine Jackie and Charlotte Told me that she has deep canvassing events. Launch that of her house in one room in one room and postcard parties happening and the other room and that really gave me the courage. to to share a video like this, you know on a call about writing postcards because hopefully, you know, you guys really understand that. I'm not somebody we're not an organization. that's going to shame people that are writing postcards for not going out there and knocking doors like it's you know, I sort of set this up with the total number of hours of activism that you can put in. So, you know, I'm going to share like all the asks right now, but you know, I I think sort of every day about you know, the stakes and how much work it really does. It takes a lot of work to to boost turnout in a presidential election. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I think my best estimate is if you write 200 postcards you've added one vote and because elections are so close in this election, you know, I mentioned 26 million postcards is going to add, you know, three to four times as many votes is decided the last presidential election. So those five tractor trailers full of postcards could be the difference between democracy and authoritarianism, but it's it's just not the case then in a presidential election if you write 30 postcards you've added three additional votes, you know, and I'll give you a little bit about the why is you know about half the people that are receiving your postcards are gonna vote. Anyway, we don't know who's gonna vote and so it's great in a presidential. and when turnouts really high and we we target people that are not certain to vote. You know, they're they they're not reliable voters necessarily but a lot of them are going to vote so about half your postcards are just going to go to people where there's nothing a postcard can do if it's arriving at the household of somebody that will vote. no matter what it doesn't mean they've already voted It just means that based on doing good statistics. They would have voted Anyway by by the time that all is said and done without your postcard. So amongst the other folks. It's like, you know a hundred people get a postcard when they're getting tons of other political mail phone calls text messages. It is pretty spectacular. I think that that male where you're putting, you know your time in a handwriting it with our color for postcards designs can really boost turn out in such a noisy environment where people are, you know aware that there's an election coming up, you know, so that's why we measure what's effective. is that it has to work we need we need to make sure that it's working if you go out on a canvassing shift and you're knocking doors, you know on an average shift, you might talk to 14 people. So if you talk to those 14 people in the fall, you've added one vote. So that's a good trade-off in terms of thinking about it is a door-to-door canvasing shift, maybe three hours. Yeah out of vote you write postcards you write 200 postcards you're adding your one vote in these Keys crucial swing States. So if you do several phone bank shifts, You're going to add votes. So it's like add as many votes as you can but it does take just a huge amount of effort to to move the needle and and what's exciting is that like none of this is reflected in the polls. all of the work that we're all putting in is going to be determinative and it's really important. So, you know postcards feel really good about your contribution and what you're doing. If you haven't done. door-to-door canvassing before but you theoretically would be able to do that if you live in a swing state or near a swing state or you know to be totally honest if you're willing to go to a swing state for a few days or a week close to the election, you know, this video is really for you because I think a lot of people don't go knock doors because they think about having to persuade Trump voters or get into arguments or you have to be a policy expert or be really really persuasive and good at having conversations, and you don't have to be it's it's as the video showed you just basically asking them have they made a plan to vote. That's that plan making tactic that we talked about. Hey, I can see from voter roles that you're you know an active voter really. Thank you. so much for being a voter and that's the same message. that's on our postcards in terms of that. So, you know just basically talking to people about that and recording that data especially in the fall is a game changer, you know, the reason I mentioned going to swing state is that we have a program that that Folks to knock doors and it can basically at 125 dollars for every list and you can do two a day, you know, you can pay to go to a swing state stay at a hotel rent a car and actually still excuse me eat out and and not come back. any of the poorer for it in terms of in terms of doing that. So not everybody has the flexibility in terms of child care work. I totally get it, but you know if we don't make big asks, then you know, you don't hit any pitches you don't swing at and you know, I think coming from somebody that's founded a program. that's had volunteers right late 50 million postcards. You know that I'm thrilled. We're it's still effective to write postcards. So, you know things that you can do right now we have had volunteers and then we'll wrap up we have had volunteers order already nine and a half million postcards. We're like 37% of the way to our goal of million postcards all of those house districts all of these swing states are just so important. So please please tell your friends tell your family to to sign up and join our movement of what I'll be a quarter million people roughly, roughly writing postcards to to save democracy this year if you've if you can write more postcards order more postcards, you know, please do that. I know stamps become really expensive and I think it's Usually it's almost always the stamps that prevent you from writing as many postcards as you as you'd love to write with us, but it doesn't mean you can't go out and recruit other people that are that are like-minded that would like to be part of this. if you would like to learn more about the door to door canvassing program that we have in Arizona, Georgia North Carolina. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. and Michigan go to turnoutpack.org slash doors. that the program sign ups for that program started at the end of August. We'll have folks out on the doors in September in those Six States. It's a really cool program. We actually focus on towns in rural parts of the state that might just not get knocked. Otherwise and if you're somebody that is interested in going into a swing state, you know, shoot us an email. You'll find you can fill out a form at that website. Love to talk to you more about that the video that I shared about door knocking is easy effective. Fun is also on our YouTube channel. So I throw the YouTube channel there at the bottom. that is where the recording for this to for this call tonight. and the slides that I shared will all be and Yeah, I mean again we can do this. feeling really optimistic, you know think about how you can put in as much time into getting out the vote as possible between now and November 5th and you know on behalf of everybody at Progressive turnout project. Just thank you all so much for all of your activism. And we'll see you soon.