Motivating People to Vote....and to Participate in Civil Society

The following article that I have written here originally appeared in an edited form in the December 2010 edition of Total Politics Magazine.

Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Turnout, Donald Green, Alan Gerber, Brookings Institution Press

Whilst many campaign books cover the whole gamut of campaigning activity, I would recommend this book for its specific focus on a fundamental part of the campaign: increasing voter turnout. Whilst many are committed to vote, how do we motivate others to change their behaviour to either walk to a polling station or even fill in a postal vote form?

Fifty years ago social norms, perhaps supported by, I suspect, much more family reinforcement, meant this was a much easier task. But we live in much more distracted, consumerist and complex times, where the stakes are perceived as lower, political divides are weaker and many things compete in our own "economics of attention".

This book draws from over 100 studies and, having thrown out red herrings about simply reminding voters through materials or increasing the level of partisanship, distills them down to three key hypotheses:

• Make people feel wanted down the polling station - voting should feel like a social occasion with a personal invitation. This is why Barack Obama's campaign was all about inviting your neighbour to vote. Phone conversations should also be a conversation not a script.
  
• Build on existing motivations - calling people back who have already said they might vote has a significant impact. A key insight is that this does not need to be partisan, so perhaps the UK needs an activist and local non-partisan "League of Women Voters"? It's also very relevant to the forthcoming AV referendum campaign. I would argue the softer, less widely motivated Yes Campaign, in order to get a mandate, needs to get a wide general commitment to "vote on my vote" as well as then focusing on various pro-Yes issues.
  
• Many people will vote if they feel others are watching - perhaps instead of compulsory voting like Australia, the real lesson is that it should be made much more publicly clear that all the parties hold "marked registers" and know not how but whether you voted. We all know the public are woefully ignorant of this simple piece of information and yet we do not tell them straight! Perhaps the parties fear the perception of "Big Brother" too much and would lack even more confidence to express this after the expenses scandal?
  

Anyone reading the above, who has studied any social psychology will see elements of Professor Robert Cialdini's studies into "commitment and consistency". Perhaps additional lessons are to gain insight into the needs, motivations and values of voters, segment the audience and communicate in the right way to them?

Finally, as well as its specific political role, I also think this book is very relevant to those working on Civil (Big) Society initiatives. It's no good simply offering up an activity and expect the busy public to take on running it. You need to make them feel wanted, get them to commit to it and demonstrate that others are taking part too. "Get out the vote" is perhaps also a very good pointer to ways one might "Get out the people"?