Getting Out the Vote!

I’m sure you have some congregants who already are politically active. However, I expect that there are a lot of couch potatoes in the congregation too. I’d like to get millennial in your congregation politically active. Also their kids. They are both my targets.

Here’s a great story that illustrates that kids, even very young one, are good candidates to join in. In 2016 I trained about a dozen New Yorkers who had come to Philly for the day to be trained to do voter registration and then go out and register people around Rittenhouse Square. Arielle Levites had arranged this event. One of the women brought her 10-year old daughter who was very passive while I was training the adults. At the end of the training, I suggested that the young girl join her mom doing voter registration. The girl was reluctant but eventually agreed. That girl accompanied her mom to TD Bank at 18th & Walnut Streets, where I had assigned the mom to register voters. Parenthetically, that locale is not one of the better locales to register voters. The girl registered 9 voters! She was obviously excited and enthused by her accomplishment. She had become a political activist, perhaps for a lifetime.

Encourage parents to bring their kids to the training sessions. Tell your congregants that even if they have done voter registration before, they too should attend. They’ll learn new techniques that will make them more effective. You can confidently make that promise I assure you.