{"id":1297,"date":"2020-04-28T11:31:54","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T15:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalgia.ink\/?p=636"},"modified":"2026-05-26T06:40:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T10:40:59","slug":"getting-out-the-vote-with-handwritten-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daviesis.io\/postalgia\/getting-out-the-vote-with-handwritten-mail\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Out The Vote with Handwritten Mail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/h3>\n

A quick way to find out if someone is an experienced political operative, as opposed to just an observer of politics who watches too much C-SPAN, is to ask them what GOTV is. GOTV, sometimes pronounced G-O-T-V (gee-oh-tee-vee) and sometimes pronounced Go-TV (Goh-Tee-Vee) is an acronym that stands for \u201cGet Out The Vote,\u201d and along with voter identification and voter persuasion, it makes up a third of the holy triumvirate of political campaigning. If voter persuasion is about getting voters to know who you are and persuading them to support you, and voter identification is about finding out which voters are going to vote for you, GOTV is the art (and sometimes science) of getting those voters to actually come out to the polls and vote for you. Why \u201csometimes science?\u201d Because as social scientists have become more interested in the study of the democratic process, they have begun to apply behavioral economics research methods to political campaigning – which has resulted in a deluge of studies, culminating most famously in Sasha Issenberg\u2019s book The Victory Lab<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Key Points\u00a0<\/strong>
\n1. Why is GOTV important?<\/a><\/p>\n

2. How do you Grab Voter’s Attention?<\/a><\/p>\n

3. Why is Personalized Handwritten Direct Mail so Effective for GOTV?<\/a><\/p>\n

4. What are the key Elements to Consider in a GOTV Mailing<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

1. Why is GOTV important?<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

Suppose that you are running for class president, and there are 100 eligible voters. If all the voters have to vote, your job is to persuade 51 of them to vote for you. Suppose that your opponent is popular amongst 60 of the eligible voters, and you have the support of 40. You really have your work cut out for you! That is how we usually think of politics \u2013 in terms of persuasion.<\/p>\n

While that may be the nature of politics in Australia, where voting is compulsory, that is not the case in the vast majority of the democratic world. The rest of the democratic world can gain the upper hand by outperforming opposing candidates when it comes to GOTV.<\/p>\n

For a more accurate thought experiment, suppose you are running for class president, and there are 100 eligible voters, but voting is not compulsory, and in an average election, only 56 of them show up to vote. Suppose that there are 60 voters who support your opponent, and 40 who support you. Assuming that 56% of voters likely to show up are proportionally distributed, your opponent can expect 33 \u2013 34 votes, and you can expect 22 \u2013 23 votes.<\/p>\n

What political scientists have discovered<\/a>, however, is that the turnout will not be distributed proportionally if you motivate your supporters, and your opponent doesn\u2019t motivate their supporters. If you do everything in your power to remind your voter that today is voting day, remind\/convince them that their vote counts, and make voting as easy as possible for them, you can reasonably expect to get 80% of your voters to the polls. Your opponent, knowing that they have the support of the majority of the voters, may do nothing. They can expect a turnout of somewhere around 40% of their supporters in an average election. Despite being the more popular candidate by far, they will lose the election 32 \u2013 24.<\/p>\n

This is a very, very cursory explanation for most of our politics today \u2013 for better or for worse; when you hear people talk about the \u201cincrease in partisanship,\u201d or things being done to \u201cmotivate the base,\u201d this is what they are talking about. Campaigners have learned that they don\u2019t need a majority of the eligible voters, they need a majority of the votes cast, and oftentimes enough votes to win can be found amongst their existing supporters without having to persuade anyone.<\/p>\n

Basically GOTV is about getting your voter to do something that they wouldn\u2019t otherwise do, and everything we know about motivating people helps us understand that doing so involves two equally important parts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Removing as many barriers as possible so that doing the action is as easy and frictionless as possible.<\/li>\n
  2. Convincing the person you are trying to motivate that the benefit of doing the thing (in this case casting a ballot) outweighs the cost (figuring out where to vote, driving to the polls, standing in line, etc\u2026)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The question is how you do those things: How do you make sure that your voters don\u2019t forget to vote? How do make them believe that the act of voting is important enough that it\u2019s worth driving to the polls? How do you make voting as easy as possible for them?<\/p>\n

    \n

    \"Feature<\/h2>\n

    2. How do you Grab Voter’s Attention?<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

    Like all other marketing endeavors, it\u2019s about getting their attention, and then using that window of opportunity once you have their attention to argue in a compelling way that the benefit of voting for you outweighs the cost.<\/p>\n

    There are a number of ways to get their attention:<\/p>\n