Elections in Czechia are just around the corner. Do you care about the outcome? In the 2021 Czech parliamentary elections, apparently 35% of eligible voters did not care, and didn’t bother to vote; voter turnout was about 65%. Czechia’s rate of voter turnout is nearly identical to the average for other countries in the OECD, which is a collection of generally high-income, Western countries.
These statistics on voter turnout raise all kinds of interesting questions, including:
- Why don’t eligible voters vote?
- Who is more likely and who less likely to vote?
- What can encourage people to vote?
In this post, we focus on answers to the last question. What works to mobilize voters? One of the most-cited works on the topic is Gerber & Green’s Get Out the Vote. According to their summary of the research, four strategies are most effective.
- Face-to-face canvassing. This typically involves volunteers going door-to-door to remind people that an election is coming up and provide information on how/where to vote. The direct, personal connection helps make it effective in encouraging turnout.
- Personal phone calls. This is the phone version of canvassing. It likewise provides information and tries to elicit a commitment to vote. An individual call from an actual person is far more effective than automated robo-calls with a recorded message.
- Reminders to encourage planning. This strategy involves asking people to make a careful plan for how, when, and where they will cast their ballot. It can be combined with in-person contact, but is also effective via SMS or email reminders.
- Social pressure appeals. Humans are herd animals, and we typically like to conform with social norms that we think will enhance our reputation. This is why campaigns activating an identity (e.g. “I’m a voter”) can be effective, or strategies that leverage community expectations (e.g. “Your neighbors are all voting — how about you?”).
If you want to encourage your friends, family, or neighbors to vote in the upcoming elections, you can easily adapt these strategies to your own situation. Try this:
- Use your personal connection to ask people in your social circle if they know about the election and whether they’re planning to vote.
- Provide some easy-to-understand information on how they can vote, such as with Volby pro Všechny’s explanation of the voting process.
- Suggest they make a concrete plan for voting day.
- Gently explain why you and many others think voting is so valuable. Volby pro Všechny’s explanation of voting rationales can help.
You don’t need to be a big political party or other institution to help boost voter turnout — individual, active citizens (and non-citizens!) are what keep democracy healthy!
