Vote Forward launches letter writing campaigns in New York and California
Vote Forward is running congressional-district specific letter writing campaigns to likely Democratic voters in highly competitive U.S. House races. We know that even a small impact on turnout can translate into thousands of votes at scale–and those thousands of votes can ultimately make a huge difference in elections. That’s why we’re writing letters to voters in New York and California: NY-03, NY-04, NY-17, NY-18, NY-19 and NY-22CA-13, CA-22, CA-27 and CA-45.
Vote Forward relies on our team of political experts who look at historical election data, polls, and other information to determine which races to choose. All the districts we target are critical for maintaining and expanding Democratic power at the state and national levels. By encouraging Democratic-leaning voters to turn out, we can help ensure that their voices are heard.
The letter template and your message
The letter template includes information about the election and a space for you to write your personalized message to voters. The California letters list the Democratic and Republican candidates for that district, but not in New York, where there are no confirmed candidates yet. The letters include two links to non-partisan voting information and ballot guides.
Get-out-the-vote (GOTV) research has shown that nonpartisan messaging is more effective than partisan messaging for boosting voter turnout. We believe these letters will work best with a nonpartisan volunteer message—meaning no direct mention of political parties or candidates.
Overall, our usual guidance for what to write in your letters still applies. We also encourage you to check out our personal story guide when crafting your message.
FAQs
Who are we writing to?
In 2024, our political work includes running two types of Political Campaigns.
One targets congressional districts where it’s critical to encourage voters to turn out for a specific U.S. House of Representatives race (the New York and California letters).
The other targets voters in strategically important states: voters in these states will have strong influence on national election results, as well as other key elections for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, or statewide offices. All of Vote Forward’s Political Campaigns target voters who are modeled as strongly likely to vote for Democrats.
For all our campaigns this year, we are focusing on turning out voters who skipped the 2016 election, but who have cast ballots in other recent elections. In other words, they do not vote in every major election, but they’ve demonstrated some recent motivation to vote. Voter turnout has surged to historic levels in the elections following 2016, powered by voters who are either new to voting or not consistent in their voting habits. Our goal is to make those historically high turnout levels the new normal, by encouraging these “surge voters” to keep showing up year after year. We also expect to include younger voters who were not old enough to register and vote in 2016. We’re considering their registration a signal of their intention to vote, and our letters will help encourage them to follow through.
I thought Vote Forward was non-partisan?
As a 501(c)4 organization, Vote Forward is able to do some political work. In all our Political Campaigns, including these New York and California campaigns, we're writing to infrequent or new voters with partisanship scores indicating their likelihood to vote for Democrats. These campaigns are listed under the Political Campaigns header, and these are the only campaigns where we are permitted to know and consider the political leanings of the voters we write to.
Most of Vote Forward’s campaigns are Social campaigns, where, we use demographic information, like age, race, or gender, to identify communities of voters who have historically been underrepresented in the electorate. For example, we know that younger voters are less likely to turn out compared to older age groups, so this year our social campaigns are focused on encouraging their participation.
Can I request a letter or stamp kit for these campaigns?
Stamp and letter kits are available for our Social campaigns only. If you need support printing your New York or California letters, please email help@votefwd.org, and we may be able to assist another way.