Businesses can make a huge impact in voter turnout by empowering customers to make their voices heard. As a business, your nonpartisan civic engagement efforts will help build trust in your brand. Celebrating Vote Early Day is a win-win for businesses, customers, and democracy!
With every Vote Early Day celebration, we want to help as many voters as possible take measurable steps toward casting their ballot in a fun and engaging atmosphere. We encourage each business partner to design a celebration that best fits the needs of their unique group of customers. This guide will help provide some inspiration and suggestions for activation ideas, but how you celebrate is totally up to you!
You can learn more about the successes of businesses who engage in Civic Responsibility here.
Celebrate by Engaging with Customers
Overview:
Vote Early Day is all about encouraging your customers to cast their ballot early by making it fun and easy! This is the perfect opportunity to both draw customers in with an exciting celebration and to show your community how much your business cares about our democracy. For even more exposure, you can post about your activation online and use #VoteEarlyDay to amplify the celebration to a national audience.
Examples:
- Create a promotional campaign around voting early:
Draw customers into your business with a special Vote Early Day celebration, decorate your space with Vote Early Day posters and swag, and set up a display to hand out resources for voting early. Have your employees wear Vote Early Day gear—we’ll send the buttons and stickers!
- Lean into what makes your business unique: Plan a celebration centered around what your business does best. In the past, businesses have found some creative ways to combine their products and services with Voting Early:
- Bars created special Vote Early Day drinks
- Dance companies organized “Dance to the Polls” recitals
- Bookstores curated displays of political and election-related favorite reads
- Coffee shops hosted panel discussions with local election officials and community leaders about why elections matter
- App-based companies pushed messaging to users within their platform
- Ice cream shops hosted pop-up events near locations for voting early
With any of these celebrations, include a Call to Action. Help your customers make a plan (using our online voter tool or by filling out a postcard for how they will cast their ballot early.
Goals:
For Vote Early Day celebrations that involve direct voter contact, we will measure our success nationwide by the number of voters who take one of the following actions:
- Attend a Vote Early Day celebration
- Make a concrete plan for when and where they will cast their ballot
- Fill out a pledge that they will cast their ballot early
- Post a photo on social media with their “I voted” sticker and tag #VoteEarlyDay
- Find their location for voting early (either in person or with a ballot drop box)
- Request their absentee ballot
- Cast a ballot during a Vote Early Day event (either in person or with a ballot drop box)
As you begin to plan out your activation, you can use this worksheet to determine an achievable goal for your organization.
Why this celebration works:
With a special event, people have a fun reason to both cast their ballot and engage with your business on Vote Early Day. Instead of being just an item on their to-do list, voting becomes the highlight of their day! A community celebration is also a low barrier to entry into the civic space for people who are intimidated by political- and election-related discourse.
Celebrate by Sharing the Tools to Vote Early
Overview:
Vote Early Day encourages you to use your business’s platform to help ensure that voters have the resources they need to cast their ballot early. This is an easy and effective way to not only show your customers how much you care about democracy, but to nudge them to get out and make their voice heard.
Examples:
- Launch a #VoteEarlyDay social media campaign:
Empower your customers by sharing resources for voting early on social media. Direct your audience to Vote Early Day’s online voter tool where they can find out where to vote and make a plan. Encourage your customers to post selfies with their “I voted” stickers after they vote early, and amplify their posts to boost their impact. Check out our sample social media posts and graphics for inspiration, and don’t forget to use #VoteEarlyDay to amplify your message to a national audience!
- Integrate Vote Early Day resources into your online platform:
Help your customers learn more about voting early and drive traffic to your website at the same time! Integrate the Vote Early Day online voter tool into your website or other platform and make it easy for your customers to get all the resources they need to cast their ballot early.
- Help your employees vote early:
Encourage your employees to make their voice heard by casting their ballot early! Send out workplace-wide emails leading up to and on Vote Early Day to let them know about their options for voting early. Include a link to our online voter tool to help them make a plan to vote and find their locations for voting early. Consider giving employees some time off on Vote Early Day as well to make sure they have time to cast their ballot early.
- Send out an email blast about voting early:
Make sure your customers know about their options for voting early by sending out an email blast or mentioning Vote Early Day in your newsletter. Direct them to our online voter tool to find their location for voting early (in person or with a ballot drop box).
- Give a pitch voting early during a meeting:
Give a brief pitch about voting early at the beginning of a staff meeting. Share why voting is important to you and discuss what’s at stake in this year’s elections. Using the Vote Early Day online voter tool or our print-at-home postcards, make sure everyone leaves with a plan for casting their ballot early. You can find a sample script here.
Goals:
For Vote Early Day celebrations that share tools to vote early, we will measure our success nationwide by the number of voters who take one of the following actions:
- Make a concrete plan for when and where they will cast their ballot
- Find their location for voting early (either in person or with a ballot drop box)
- Request their absentee ballot
- Post a photo with their “I voted” sticker and tag #VoteEarlyDay
As you begin to plan out your activation, you can use this worksheet to determine an achievable goal for your organization.
Why this celebration works:
Sharing resources for voting early helps to build trust in your brand, and it reminds the public how important this election is! By encouraging your customers to share their voting experience online, you help create a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) for anyone who hasn’t yet joined in on the fun.
Studies also show that people are much more likely to vote if they make a concrete plan for how they’re going to cast their ballot. When you share Vote Early Day’s online voter tool, you make it easy for voters to make this plan.