Tired of carrying clipboards filled with hard-to-read names on sheets of paper? Or, tired of sitting at a card table in the sun, waiting for someone to come to you to get registered to vote? Or, want to help people get registered to vote, but don’t know where to start? And you want to do it quickly, since the deadline to register to vote in this fall’s election is MONDAY?!?
Have we got the tool for you!
It’s called Map the Vote, and it gives you a map that shows households with eligible voters. Knock on the door, ask them if they would like to register to vote, and register them right there. And, it’s all done on your phone. (Isn’t technology wonderful?)
The app (it’s actually a website that works in the browser on your phone or tablet or computer) was developed last year by a non-profit in Texas, and was used to register Texas voters ahead of the 2018 mid-terms. Volunteers from Register2Vote used this tool and others registered 156,000 new voters in six weeks. Now it has come to Kentucky, and is being used by over 200 people across the state to register new voters.
Here’s more from the “About” page at the site:
MapTheVote is a project of the 501c4 non-profit Register2Vote. MapTheVote aggregates publicly available data and provides analysis on locations that are likely to have unregistered, eligible voters living at them. The map is a guide to help coordinate and improve voter registration around the country. It has been built primarily by volunteers from many organizations, and is funded by Register2Vote and its founders. MapTheVote doesn’t expose any personal data — it’s just a way for those who wish to register voters in their communities to more easily connect with potential voters.
The Kentucky effort as told by Sellus Wilder and Lutisha Buckner
We interviewed Sellus Wilder and Lutisha Buckner to learn more about this new tool. They both work with Kentucky Civic Engagement, which works with member non-profits to support the civic engagement efforts of the groups. Wilder and Buckner learned about Map the Vote from people in Texas who had used the tool, and they’ve been working with groups and individuals in Kentucky to get the tool into the field.
The tool is non-partisan – anyone can use it to register voters. It looks like Google maps, except it includes a green dot over houses where there is a person eligible to vote who is not registered. It uses publicly-available data and cross-references it with data from the state Board of Elections to build the list of persons possibly needing to register.
Map the Vote has been in active use in Kentucky for about four weeks, and registration results are still being gathered. Buckner said, “I’m in Berea today, and we’re helping a group here use it to do registration work. There have been some groups in Lexington and in Louisville. People are out there using it actively.” Added Wilder, “The more the merrier!”
At this point, it’s not possible to say how many new voters have come in through Map the Vote. Some groups are using the tool along with their own registration program, while other users are using the tool for their own individual efforts. Later on, Wilder and Buckner hope to pull reports showing how many of those green dots were cleared from the maps, which would at least show how many eligible voters were contacted.
How do I get this tool?
It’s really simple – just go to MapThe.Vote and sign up! You can do it as an individual, or get a group together, and start contacting eligible voters. It’s free, it’s non-partisan, it’s easy to use, and it can help you get more people engaged in the democratic process.
And do it now! The deadline to register for this November’s statewide election is MONDAY, October 7.
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