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On Election Day, the most important strat- he can. “It’s just fun,” he said. “Seventy-five 2
egy is canvassing — going door to door to urge percent of people I talked to would do it.”
supporters to vote. Typically, volunteers get a Mr. Stanley led a randomized trial of
list (usually imperfect) of supporters in a polling place vote tripling on the Oberlin
neighborhood. But they can be blocks apart. College campus during the Ohio primary in
“With luck you knock on 10 doors in an March. He found that turnout was nearly
hour,” said Shana Gallagher, who directed col- eight percentage points higher among people
lege organizing for Bernie Sanders. “Five peo- on the list to get texts, when compared with
ple open their door, and three actually support the control group.
your candidate. You rarely see the person get in That’s an enormous effect; usually, a boost 15 Section 1 / Understanding and Analyzing Evidence
their car to go vote. You have no idea what of one percentage point is considered valuable.
happens.” But the study is unpublished, and has many
She called one canvass on a college campus caveats, and there are many reasons his meth-
“the biggest waste of time in my political career.” ods might not be usable in other circumstances.
And now there’s Covid-19. Even if canvassers are Mr. Reynolds founded the organization
careful, they can put elderly or sick voters at Votetripling.org, which does research on the
risk. “Canvassing, while one of the best tools, practice and helps Democrats use vote tripling
is profoundly inefficient,” Ms. Gallagher said. “This in swing states.
can’t possibly be the best way to spend our time.” I wrote about Mr. Reynolds’s earlier version
Maybe it isn’t. Robert Reynolds, a behav- of vote tripling in 2019 as part of a new wave of
ioral scientist, thinks there’s something better: strategies for friend-to-friend organizing, also
polling place vote tripling. called “relational organizing.”
It works this way: Volunteers hang out out- 10 We all listen to our friends, but word of
side a busy polling place (maintaining the mouth can matter more in communities
legally required distance). When someone that have historically not trusted the establish-
emerges, volunteers thank him or her for being ment. “The way Black people have gotten
a voter — and ask the voter to text three friends information about politics or social issues —
who might need a nudge to vote. those are churches, sororities and fraternities,
We know friend-to-friend contact is twice neighborhood block clubs,” said Adrianne
as powerful as outreach from a stranger. The Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC,
challenge is how to go big and have friend-to- which seeks to facilitate Black activism. “These
friend contacts on a scale large enough to social structures are longstanding.”
make a difference in an election. Polling place Many relational organizing tools are apps
vote tripling tries to solve that problem. that allow campaign activists to find and
Near a busy polling place, a volunteer can reach key contacts in their address books.
talk to 25 people per hour, and 15 of them will Mr. Reynolds points out that 97 percent of vot-
each text three friends. That’s 45 people reached ers are non- activists. They won’t download an
in one volunteer-hour, putting canvassing in the app. But they’ll text three friends — and those
dust. And because they come from friends, these unexpected nudges will carry more weight.
contacts will be more powerful. Ordinary voters are also more likely to have
Ken Stanley, a political consultant in Ohio friends who need a reminder to vote.
who helps campaigns use and train volunteers, Vote tripling away from polling places works 20
found out about vote tripling about a year ago throughout the campaign. When a volunteer
and has used it personally since then whenever reaches a supporter — by canvassing, text or
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