1. register your constituents to vote in 2017 Voter Registration for 501(c)(3) Service Providers and Community based Organizations
All attendees will receive a copy of this PowerPoint presentation and a link to the recorded webinar
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Presented by

2. Find out more about our mission and partners on our site
About Nonprofit Vote
Founded in 2005, Nonprofit VOTE partners with America's nonprofits to help the people they serve participate and vote.
We are a leading source of nonpartisan training, materials and other resources for nonprofits doing voter engagement work.
Find out more about our mission and partners on our site
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About Us

3. Today’s presenters Emily Shamsid Deen Community Engagement Manager
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Emily Shamsid Deen
Community Engagement Manager
Community Resource Center
Cheryl Ellis
Special Campaigns Coordinator
Democracy North Carolina

4. agenda Why Voter Registration Nonpartisan Guidelines Making a Plan
Doing Voter Registration
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Agenda

5. Municipal elections in 2017
42 of the 100 largest cities in the country have municipal elections for both mayor and city council this year, as do thousands of other cities and towns.
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42 of the 100 largest cities in the country have municipal elections for both mayor and city council! Many jurisdictions will also have judges, school committee and other offices up.
2016

6. ballot measures in 2017
In the typical odd-year election, between 35 and 45 statewide measures appear on ballots in roughly 10 states. But hundreds of other local measure will appear on ballots around the country.
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- Opportunity to have an outsized influence given how little GOTV is going on
Ballot
Measures

7. Why Voter Registration
In 2012, 1 in 4 eligible Americans was not registered to vote
Disparities in voter registration & turnout
Disparities in voter outreach
Who votes matters!
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Talk about recent influx of immigrants in Latino and AAPI pops
Registration as a major barrier to participation, especially for young people OREGON
GOTV problems – geographical and feedback loop
Talk about the negative feedback loop
Worse in off years
* Pew_Upgrading_Voter_Registration.pdf **
*** and
Why Voter
Registration

8. Why Voter Registration
Longer term benefits to your organizations and your community:
Get the Attention of Candidates
Build Community Clout
Foster Community-Based Leadership
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We also know that voter registration has longer term benefits to your organization and your community.
Candidates and elected officials pay attention to communities that are registered to vote and that turnout to vote. If you want candidates and elected officials to spend time in your community, to listen to your community’s concerns, then it’s important that you make sure as many people as possible are registered and that they make it to the polls on Election Day.
It also helps to make sure that candidates and elected officials know that you’re doing this work. If you’re known as an organization that can turn out your constituency, you more likely to be listened to.
Voter engagement work in general also helps to build leadership from within your community and ultimately leads to people from within your community being elected to office.
Why Voter
Registration

9. Nonpartisan guidelines
Emily
Guidelines

10. THE BASIC GUIDELINE
“A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization may not support or oppose a candidate for public office”
-1954 amendment to US Tax Code
Emily
The IRS has one basic guideline for nonprofits. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization MAY NOT support or oppose a candidate for public office. That’s it.
But what you can do is a wide range of nonpartisan voter engagement activities, including voter registration, voter education and get out the vote efforts.
Some nonprofits are actually required to do voter registration by the National Voter Registration Act and I’ll talk about that more in a minute.
There are a couple of exceptions to this. If you’re an AmeriCorp member or a Legal Services group you’re pretty much prohibited from doing voter engagement work. Head Start agencies also have some restrictions. You can read more about that in our factsheet “Federal Funds and Voter Participation.”
Guidelines 10

11. Guidelines for voter registration
When registering someone to vote:
You may not suggest which candidate to support or which political party to join
You may explain what it means to register without party affiliation
You may provide nonpartisan voter guides or encourage people to ask friends or neighbors to learn more about the candidates
Emily
How does this guideline play out when it comes to voter registration? The one thing you have to watch out for is that you may not suggest to someone that join a political party when their filling out their form. Of course, you can’t suggest that they vote for a particular party or candidate either.
What you can do is explain what will happen if they don’t enroll with a party. If you’re in state that has a closed primary system, you need to be a member of a party to participate in its primary (or caucus).
You can also answer questions like “What’s the difference between a Democrat and a Republican?” You can answer that by saying “President Obama is a Democrat and Governor Romney is a Republican.” And you can direct people to other sources of information.
Guidelines

12. The National Voter Registration ACT
The National Voter Registration Act of requires:
Agencies signing up people for federal benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, SCHIP, WIC, TANF to proactively offer voter registration
States to designate state-funded programs for people with disabilities to offer voter registration
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Beyond just providing registration forms, Section 7 requires that applicants receive the same level of assistance when completing voter registration forms as is provided with completing the agencies’ own forms. Designated agencies and offices must:
provide voter registration forms and ask each person about registering to vote;
offer to assist registrants with completing the form, and;
accept and return completed forms to the proper elections officials.
PAUSE FOR QUESTIONS JJ
Guidelines

13. Federal funds and voter registration
Nonprofits who receive Community Service Block Grant funding (e.g. Community Action Agencies) and Head Start agencies may not:
Use CSBG or Head Start funds to pay for staff or materials to conduct voter registration.
Use CSBG or Head Start funds to provide rides to the polls.
AmeriCorps members cannot conduct voter registration during work hours.
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Beyond just providing registration forms, Section 7 requires that applicants receive the same level of assistance when completing voter registration forms as is provided with completing the agencies’ own forms. Designated agencies and offices must:
provide voter registration forms and ask each person about registering to vote;
offer to assist registrants with completing the form, and;
accept and return completed forms to the proper elections officials.
PAUSE FOR QUESTIONS JJ
Guidelines

14. Making a Plan
Emily
Making a
Plan

15. What to expect Many people are already registered
Updating an address on a registration is just as important as registering for the first time
Since many people are already registered, it is useful to combine registration with other activities like a voter pledge card or promoting your services or an event.
Emily
A lot lower income folks are forced to move frequently, which means that they’ll also need to update their voter registration with a new address. This is also true of a lot of young people. They move frequently, so they need to update their registration frequently.
If you’re tabling or doing voter reg outside your agency, try to combine your registration work with something else, like promoting an event or highlighting one of your services. That way, you’re providing people with an added reason to approach you.
Making a
Plan

16. Getting Started When planning your efforts keep the following in mind:
Put your plan on paper!
Designate a staff person to take the lead
Gain buy-in from the executive director and staff
Connect with your local elections office
Emily
…mention that we have a whole hour long webinar on making a plan
It’s important to establish who your staff lead is going to be. This is the person who’s going to take responsibility for things like getting registration forms from your local elections official and returning them in a timely fashion after they’ve been filled out.
Make sure that your ED or CEO and the people who be involved in your registration activities are bought into the idea of your organization doing registration. Tell them how important this work is in a presidential election year and how your organization has the ability to reach people that no one else can.
Forge a relationship with your local elections officials. They are an invaluable resources when it comes to doing this work. Call them up and let them know that you’re planning on doing voter registration, ask them for any tips they might have or resources that you can use in your work.
Making a
Plan

17. Knowing the Rules Voter registration deadlines
SDR/EDR
Voter registration eligibility requirements
The basics
Pre-registration
Ex-offenders
State-specific rules on voter registration
Turnaround time
Emily
About half the states have voter registration deadlines that are about 30 days before Election Day. The other half varies. And a few states allow what’s know as Same Day Registration or Election Day Registration. [Explain that]
In many states, people who have a past felony conviction who have completed the terms of their sentence (prison, probation and parole) are immediately eligible to register and vote. Unfortunately, many ex-offenders are unaware of this fact and mistakenly believe that they can’t register and vote.
The only thing to note about age requirements is that more and more states are now allowing 16 and 17 year olds to register to vote, automatically making their registrations active when they turn 18.
PAUSE FOR QUESTIONS
VISIT WEBSITE IF TIME
Making a
Plan

18. Doing Voter Registration
Cheryl
Doing
Voter
Reg

19. When to do Voter Registration
Registration Drive: Conduct registration over the weeks or months leading up to the voter registration deadline in your state, e.g. during August, September and October.
Single Day: Focus on a single day, like a weekend or special event
Cheryl
Emphasize the timing piece:
One thing we like to tell people is that it is always preferable to do voter reg in the couple of months leading up to the registration deadline. There are two reasons for this. First, the closer you are to election day when you register someone, the more likely they are to turn out and vote. Second, people with lower incomes are frequently forced to move. So if you register someone way back in January, there’s a good chance that by the time November rolls around, they will have moved. You can avoid that problem by trying to register people closer to the reg deadline.
Doing
Voter
Reg

20. National Voter Registration Day
September 26th is NVRD!
Sign up now at:
bit.ly/MyNVRD
or visit
Cheryl
Talk about the fact that it’s endorsed by NASS
Talk about website
Talk about what you get when you sign up as an official participating organization
Talk about how this is the 6th year and it’s grown every year. The goal this year is to register 100,000
Last year registered half a million people
Doing
Voter
Reg 20

21. Where to do Voter Registration
At your agency:
As a part of services: Integrated into intake or other interactions with constituents
Tabling: In your lobby, outside your front door or in a high traffic area
Cheryl
In agency:
Tabling
Key questions: “Are you registered to vote? Have you recently moved?” Or “Have you updated your voter registration recently?”
Once or twice a week
Use volunteers
Pair registration with a pledge to vote program or with other info about services, events, the upcoming elections
Doing
Voter
Reg

22. Where to do Voter Registration
Outside your agency:
At events: A citizenship ceremony, a community festival
In your neighborhood: A highly trafficked location like a transit stop or shopping area
Cheryl
Outside:
Events
Good opportunity to use volunteers, especially youth groups
NOTE: Door-to-door canvassing is not always effective when registering voters.

23. RECRUIT/TRAIN Staff and volunteers
Provide training for staff and volunteers on:
Why this is important
Answering FAQs about voting
Answering FAQs about the voter registration form
Cheryl
Once you have a good grasp of the kinds of activities you’re interested in and when and where they’ll take place, you should think about what your staff and volunteers will need to know to effectively carry out these activities.
Volunteers can play a key role, but some training will be necessary.
Make sure that your volunteers can answer basic questions about voting and registering to vote or, if they can’t, that they at least know where to direct people to learn more.
Doing
Voter
Reg

24. Making an effective ask
Confidence, assertiveness and eye contact
“Are you registered to vote at your current address?”
Be accurate. An incomplete form or a form filled out incorrectly does not count
Cultural competency when discussing citizenship
Cheryl
Are you registered to vote at your current address?
IF YES: Great, if you haven't moved since the last election you should be all set.
IF NO: I can help you register right now!
Doing
Voter
Reg

25. Getting and Returning Paper Forms
Getting voter registration forms
Returning completed voter registration forms to your local election office
Turnaround time
Retaining information for GOTV
Cheryl
Paper forms are best for doing work outside your agency, but can also be helpful if you don’t have easy access to a computer and printer when tabling in your agency
The best place to get registration forms is from your local elections officials. You can get forms from the Secretary of State, but your county or city officials will appreciate it if you use their form.
When you’re returning forms there are a couple of things to bear in mind. First, although most states are fairly casual about when you return completed registration forms, there are a few that have stricter turnaround times. MN, for example, gives you 10 days to return completed registration forms to your local elections officials. Ask your local officials about turnaround times in your state.
The other thing you might want to keep in mind is whether you want to retain any of the information on the registration form to do get out the vote work later on. For example, if you end up with a lot of phone numbers, you might want to call those people on Election Day to make sure that they know where their polling place is located.
Doing
Voter
Reg

26. Helping Complete the Paper Form
Frequently missed items
Eligibility check boxes
ID number
Date of birth
Party affiliation
Signature and date
Cheryl
These are the items that are most frequently forgotten.
Party affiliation is the only tricky one. You can’t suggest that people register with a particular party, but you can explain the difference between parties by citing examples, if you’re asked. So you might tell someone “President Clinton and President Obama are Democrats and President Reagan and President Bush are Republicans.”
Doing
Voter
Reg

27. Promoting Voter registration
When interacting with clients, let them know they can register to vote in your agency!
Use your communications channels - social media, website, newsletter
Create a display in your agency using signs, posters, decorations
Cheryl
Promote!

28. Paperless Online registration
Online voter registration is a rapidly growing trend! 2/3rds of states now have paperless online voter registration!
What about collecting information for GOTV?
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20 states now have it, several others will be adding it soon. JJ
Doing
Voter
Reg

29. Using a paper-based online tool
Online tools like Nonprofit VOTE’s make registering to vote fast and easy
Follow the prompts to fill out the form, then print it, sign it, date it and return it to your election officials at the address provided
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Our tool is powered by Rock the Vote, which has been doing this work for years,
It’s perfect for in-agency voter registration, because it provides state-specific information about registering; clear, easy to follow prompts; and eliminates errors caused by poor handwriting, missed fields, etc.
The tool makes it easy to track voter registration information - no additional photocopying of forms or data entry is required.
Rock the Votes tool uses the federal voter registration form
You still need to print out the form, have the voter sign and date and then return it for the voter to you local election office within the allowed time.
JJ will do this
VISIT WEBSITE
Doing
Voter
Reg

30. We use research, advocacy and organizing to increase voter participation, reduce the influence of big money in politics and achieve a government truly of, by and for the people.
democracync.org

32. Community Resource Center creates opportunities, tools and strategies to develop nonprofits and community groups to strengthen Colorado.

33. info@nonprofitvote.org 617.357.VOTE (8683) www.nonprofitvote.org
2464 Massachusetts Ave
Suite 210
Cambridge, MA 02140
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Helena Berbano
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