Statement on Get Out the Vote Texting
Nov 5, 2022
On Saturday, November 5, Movement Labs launched get out the vote texting campaigns in an effort to increase voter turnout. In a number of states, voters received texts with the address and an image of their closest Election Day polling location. Extensive experiments we’ve conducted show that these messages increase voter participation, and we’re thrilled that we’re able to increase voter turnout in this crucial election. Movement Labs was founded to use technology and innovation to strengthen our democracy – these texts are doing exactly that.
Movement Labs is using Democracy Works’ Voter Information Project, the gold standard in online polling place data, to ensure polling locations are correct for each voter and that errors are kept to a minimum. The data they gather comes directly from state and county election clerks and is the same info that the voter would have gotten had they entered the address into Vote.org, VoteAmerica, BallotReady, or any number of other national voter polling location lookup tools.
We have notified relevant Secretaries of State ahead of launching these campaigns. If any voters’ addresses are identified correctly but the polling location shared doesn’t match what the Secretary of State website presents as their polling location, we encourage voters to go to https://turbovote.org/where-to-vote/, enter your address, and click the dialogue icon with an exclamation point to log the error so that the central database is notified.
Because mobile phone numbers change hands, we estimate that around 2% of the texts we send might be addressed to the wrong person. To ensure those individuals are not confused, our texts share the voter’s address we have on record so that they can verify whether the polling location we included is correct. We also note that we are not local election officials and encourage voters to confirm their voting location via a link to the government voting website.
Movement Labs knows that these are challenging times for our democratic process and that any errors around sensitive information, such as a polling location, are unacceptable. We are committed to doing our best to give voters confidence in our elections, to strengthen the voting system and welcome any and all scrutiny into our efforts. The health of our democracy demands no less.
For more information
Link to Yoni’s statement
Link to VOTO statement
Link to BVM statement
