Phone Banking at CSWE APM

We aim to create a space for APM attendees to engage in non-partisan Get Out the Vote (GOTV) activities--postcards and phone/text banking--to activate low-propensity voters in key electoral arenas and underrepresented constituencies. We will partner with non-partisan voter engagement organizations to leverage their operations, scripts, and targets.

Given the importance of the 2024 election cycle and its possible impacts on our client populations and the issues crucial to advancing social work values, Influencing Social Policy and the Voting is Social Work Campaign propose to mobilize interested APM conference attendees to engage in Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) activities during the conference. Specifically, we will enable interested attendees to conduct nonpartisan phone calls, text message, and sending post cards to infrequent voters in states and communities particularly crucial for advancing democracy. We will help APM attendees understand how GOTV activities influence democratic participation and build their skills for engaging in GOTV, by creating an empowering context for contacts that encourage participation in upcoming elections.

Nonpartisan phone calls, texts, and sending post cards are methods of voter contact whereby volunteers activate infrequent voters to engage electorally. As nonprofit 501(c)3 organizations and their representatives are prohibited from attempting to influence the outcome of a specific election–and CSWE and many social worker attendees’ employing organizations are 501(c)3s–our proposed phone bank, text, and post card contacts will aim to convince people to vote and help them make a plan to vote, rather than try to convince them to support/oppose any candidate or specific issue. These efforts are informed by nonpartisan voter activation organizations’ own research (Environmental Voter Project, 2022) and by findings that GOTV phone calls are effective particularly when they are made by volunteers, rather than by employees or automated systems (Nickerson, 2006).
Using voter lists and platforms of respected nonpartisan GOTV organizations, we will contact infrequent voters to encourage them to vote and to develop a plan to vote. CSWE conference attendees will use their own cell phones and laptops to log into the virtual phone bank of a nonprofit and nonpartisan organizational partner (selecting from a list of choices, including Environmental Voter Project, Center for Common Ground, and NAACP). The organizations provide scripts that volunteers can modify and then use to facilitate conversations with/leave messages for targeted voters, who are infrequent voters at least potentially open to activation, for a shift that works within their APM schedule (usually, 30-120 minutes). Further, we believe that providing this opportunity at APM will support attendees’ ongoing voter mobilization efforts in their own contexts, thus amplifying social work’s efforts in this crucial democratic moment.

The GOTV and voter engagement activities align with two of the nine CSWE Competencies, C5: Engage in policy practice and C6: Engage with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Moreover, voting rights, voting, and civic engagement align with our profession’s commitment to racial and social justice. It supports programs and services that benefit our clients, communities, and wider society. Finally, low-income, and racial minorities are the least likely to vote, and communities with low voter turnout receive less attention, slower responses, and fewer resources from legislators than communities with higher voter turnout. As such, encouraging infrequent voters to vote for candidates who represent their interests may help them, their families, and their communities to get needed resources and services.