The most important thing we can all do is to GOTV to help increase voter turnout. Think about this in 2 parts:
- Getting new (or lapsed) voters to register
- Getting registered voters to vote
Imagine if each of us could get just 5 friends to register and vote! In my opinion the best plan is to contact your own friends and people on your phone or email lists. An excellent free app, Vote With Me, identifies each person on your phone contact list, and lets you know if they are registered and their voting history. They have pre-formed texts to help you contact your friends. Start with VoteWithMe and build up from there. Ask each of your friends to contact 5 people in their own circle. People pay attention to people they know, and receiving a message from a known source is the best way to influence someone to register and vote.
If you exhaust your personal contacts and want to do more, look for an organization you believe in, and volunteer to help them GOTV.
Many different organizations are working on getting new voters to register and getting voters whose registration may have lapsed to reregister. Each has different focus and each have excellent ideas. Here are some of the best non-partisan websites:
The following websites are for consultants to political campaigns, and have good ideas for GOTV:
Advocay and Communications Solutions
Every state requires voters to register, and each state has slightly different rules and deadlines. A very good website to help people in every state register or find out information on how to register is Vote.org. You can also visit your secretary of state website for your state. Just google voter registration for your state