REACH OUT! The Elections Educator Newsletter 6/11/25
Weekly Highlight: Advice for Building Election Outreach Programs! Actionable Information about Comms & Events for Election Administrators, 501(c)3s, and Volunteers doing Get Out the Vote activities!
This issue is a Part 2 of a two-parter focused on giving advice for building a voter outreach program from scratch. This week we hone in on planning, resources, and strategies for outreach communications and in-person outreach events.
(Last week was geared towards the administrative back end of what goes in to setting yourself up for success prior to reaching out to the community.)
We are now a month in to the grand experiment of Reach Out! The Elections Education Newsletter! Welcome new and current readers! I hope you’ll stay awhile. :) I’m delighted and awed that we’ve already created a little community of election Outreachers. We are now at 21 subscribers across the country (world?) Please share the newsletter with your network of likeminded democracy lovers and civic engagers.
If you’re new here, here’s a very brief intro of how the newsletter works. I start off with sharing elections news related to our work, then resources and organizations that are revolutionizing our field with the aid they provide to elections administration, nonprofits, and volunteers in successfully connecting with and educating the every day voter. If life has gifted me the metaphorical energy spoons to do so, I will also throw in a longer form article- like what you’ll see below!
Lastly, there is a side project that coincides with REACH OUT! I’m preparing a Resource Hub where all the awesome outreach and education resources I find can be publicly accessible and easily navigated in a database. Later this year it will go live.
My intended posting schedule is every Wednesday (I’ll put out a note if life gets in the way and an newsletter issue is delayed). If any of the below article information is useful to you and your team, subscribe and share the newsletter!
IN THE NEWS
ELECTION OUTREACH:
Santa Fe county launches contest to name ballot sorting machine. By Nicole Sanders 6/9/2025
THIS IS SO COOL. Vermont Secretary of State Introduces Kid Governor® Civic Education Program -6/8/25
Check out the program website here.
ELECTION EDUCATION:
Non-profit Keep Our Republic will host an educational forum at Dusquene University to educate PA political leaders across political ideology spectrum about misinformation and disinformation surrounding elections processes. By Laura Esposito, 6/10/25
Anniston AL launches interactive voting map ahead of municipal election. By Bill Wilson, 6/9/2025
visit the map tool itself here.
Charlottesville, VA to hold mock election to help ease citizens into new system of ranked-choice voting. By Sophia Long, 6/3/25
DOING MORE WITH LESS: BUILDING YOUR VOTER OUTREACH PROGRAM (PART TWO)
When talking with others about outreach, conversation veers in one of two directions: Social media for voter engagement or registration drives for voter engagement.
But there are SO MANY MORE kinds of outreach activities that can be incorporated into an outreach program!
Some outreach activity types may be more realistic than others to implement when you take into account your current or future capacity and intended outreach program purposes. Depending on some variables such as your
outreach objective for a particular activity
budget
planning constraints
day-of time constraints
manpower
technology tools/ physical resources
employee/volunteer/audience accessibility needs
your outreach program can look very different from the next county over. Whatever you decide to do, cater your actions towards the services your community would best respond to.
Some outreach activities are of short duration while others are more long-term.
Being asked to visit a single high school classroom to give an hour-long presentation VS. collaborating with a local library system to travel around to all their branches to teach multiple Elections 101 classes over the summer.
Re-posting something creative your Secretary of State’s social media team posted on their Facebook page to your own following VS. developing a social media posting calendar for an information campaign about candidate filing
Some activities cost no money while others may have a fee attached to participate.
There will be FREE community resource fairs (likely offered by other county and city departments) you can join as as a resource booth vendor if you’re on the look-out VS. Annual community events such as holiday festivals and farmer's markets that require vendors to pay a fee to participate and reserve their tent spot.
Social media posting is free UNLESS you decide to do a paid advertisement
Radio PSAs are free VS a radio interview on a talk show will cost a lot of money.
Some activities are intended to be directly interactive with voters while others are in-direct.
Outreach booths and Presentations are interactive for audiences of all sizes VS. Social media and direct mail messaging are in-direct forms of communication with individuals.
I’ve whipped up a quick table in Canva to show 31 different outreach activities and how I compare them to each other. There are some things I don’t have personal experience with, so I’ve left a question mark as the value. (I’ve put an image of the table down below, but alas, it doesn’t seem to be formatting nicely for desktop or mobile. If you click on it it should expand to view.)
LEVERAGING MEDIA THAT WORKS FOR YOUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS
When it comes to communications, it’s best practice to be multi-modal in order to reach the widest cast net of an audience possible. Thankfully, you have many options and free or low-cost tools at your disposal to work with as well as community partners waiting to be discovered to help you out.
You can get your message out there through
Print Communications (direct mail, newspapers, flyers, posters)
Classic Audio/Visual communications (radio, television)
New Media (Social Media Platforms, Blogs, Email, Websites)
While much of the world seems to be connected by the internet nowadays, there is still a significant chunk of the population who cannot reliably access or is uncomfortable with technology to access the information we may put online through New Media mediums. For example, older folk may not have a computer or smart phone. Rural citizens may not have broadband internet unless they visit a local library.
Relatedly, some cultures may not have the same relationship to New Media that we do. Non-English speaking communities rely heavily on local radio, tv channels, and Youtube to find information in their language as the majority of information made available online is in English and thus not accessible.
These are my recommended resources to get started with understanding, strategizing, and then building out your basic communications across different mediums. These may not be the fanciest pro tools on the planet, but they are user friendly, intuitive, and low-cost which are all perfect for those just getting started with outreach who are prioritizing efficiency and reliability in content creation and distribution.
Top Tools for Content Creation
Votercast is your one stop shop for creating elections messaging content. From generating text based on your elections calendar and chosen voter education topic to graphic design to AI language translation, Votercast is a platform that was designed specifically as a low cost solution (there is a basic FREE tier!) for election administrators. While not as visually complex as other graphic design options out there, It is specifically catered to your needs.
Canva is great alternative to Adobe if you loooove graphic design and want the option for team collaboration. I’m in Canva all the time for both work and personal projects since I’m a visual thinker and simultaneously visualize how a document is formatted and colored for psychological impact while I am drafting out text.
Tools for Outreach
Vote.org is highly trusted across the nation for creating tools that non-profits and businesses can integrate in their online presence to register their audiences to vote and find candidate information. Check them out and you will be impressed with the positive impact they have made to American civic engagement. They have a FREE plan with tools optimized for mobile and for embedding into your website.
Explainers for planning your own specific low-cost outreach projects
Using Radio Tipsheet by Elections Group
How to Write a Press Release by Elections Group
Using Video to Tell a Story by Elections Group
Writing Emails for Email Marketing Campaigns by Elections Group
OUTREACH EVENTS- HOW TO FIND EVENTS TO ATTEND
Here’s my quick guide to seeking out local events to attend in your area to set up a voter information booth.
Visit your county government website and check out the pages for
Parks and Recreation
Human Services
County Council
Each of these departments should have an events calendar you can follow. Parks and Rec will advertise outdoor events that may need vendor booths as well as indoor events at local community centers. Human Services may lead community resource fairs you can collaborate with them at as a vendor or have community advisory committees you can be a topical speaker at. Reach out to each department about the events you’re interested in attending. County Council’s (if your county has one) members will likely have newsletters you can subscribe to. In their newsletters, they may advertise events in their districts. Reach out to their office to see if they’d like a voter information booth to engage their constituents!
Repeat this government website process for local cities and towns, but then also look into Chambers of Commerce and any Downtown Business Associations for their event calendars.
Determine what each city’s/town’s biggest annual festival is and then determine who the organizers are and what the vendor fee would be for a non-profit/community resource booth. (These can get kind of pricy but the foot traffic is fantastic.)
Farmer’s Markets! Determine where the farmers markets take place throughout your area, how long their season is, what the best weather period would be to attend, and the vendor fee. You may need to do some sweet talking to convince the organizers that you are not political and are in fact non-partisan by nature of being elections administrators/ a 501©3/really dedicated to GOTV.
Scroll through Facebook Events and Eventbrite. Unique Events sometimes pop up there first before anywhere else!
Keep an ear out for k-12 school events like cultural nights, graduations, and ASB student ID card pick-up day. Then know when college/university terms start and graduations occur! Get a connection with someone in student life to invite you to set up booths in the quad.
Let events come to you! Set up a request form on your website for community members to ask you attend their organization’s event/ go give a presentation.
WHAT YOU NEED TO BUILD A BASIC OUTREACH EVENT KIT
You’ll need to be prepared for both indoor and outdoor interactions. Sometimes, the venue and event organizers will be able to provide you with a few items, such as a table and chair. But it’s best practice to have everything in this list on hand at your office or know of items in another government department that you have permission to borrow if called for. Other items, like large signage, banners, fancy swag, and matching employee logoed outfits are not necessary for the functioning of your booth and don’t need to be worried about as you’re first starting your outreach program.
a portable folding table.
Preferably 6ft x 2 ft.
a tablecloth or table runner.
If you have the funds to spare, purchase one with your logo prominently on it.
One folding chair per outreach person manning your booth.
An extra chair to offer to voters needing accessibility accommodations.
There will always be people grateful to sit down at an event due to a visible or invisible disability.
(Like ME! I have POTS which makes standing for long periods of time dangerous. An extra chair is an accommodation I wish more vendors were thoughtful enough to bring when I’m out and about as a regular member of the public. I may be disabled but I still want to support small businesses and learn about community resources.)
An outdoor vendor tent
8x8 or 10x10
detachable walls to block the sun from roasting you!
Tent weights
Event organizers always require you to bring weights to secure your tent down. You’d be surprised how many events are crazy windy. Paper handouts beware!
Paper handouts!
Make sure to have useful information and forms for community members to take.
Integrate QR codes onto your handouts so that voters can access website resources, such as on online voter registration portal, language translations, and pdf versions of your educational content.
Pens/Clipboards/REGISTRATION FORMS
END NOTE:
It seems pretty crazy to me that we’re already halfway through 2025. We’re in pretty crazy times too in the USA, with a lot of democratic unrest. I wish I could be more direct, but I have to stay non-partisan on all public platforms in order to keep being employed at my day job as an elections administrator. While I’m writing this newsletter as an individual off-the-clock and independent of my elections division, what I say and do privately can still impact the public perception of the elections division since I’m the one out and about doing all the public interactions as our Outreach Specialist.
Reserving my more vocal political self in order to better serve The People can be hard sometimes. But for democracy to work, elections need to keep running securely and fairly for people to choose to engage with. It’s personally really important to me to lower barriers to voting engagement on the individual level for each voter, even if that means I must choose to limit my own civic engagement expression in other ways. I take comfort in my role as voter outreach and elections education specialist because my career is dedicated to empowering others where they may have been or felt disenfranchised before.
All that being said, I think I can at least say this to you all in light of the scheduled and impromptu civil gatherings occurring this weekend across the nation:
Be safe and smart everyone.