Successful ballot harvesting is not unlike squeezing all the water out of a sponge; it's about making sure every person registered to your party votes.
Across California, data shows that one-third of registered voters in each of the two major parties (Democrats and Republicans) do not vote or do not vote consistently. Among independents or NPPs (for No Party Preference), significantly more than half do not vote regularly.
As a way of making sure everyone votes, ballot harvesting was made legal in California under Governor Jerry Brown. Ballot harvesting, also called third-party ballot collection, is when someone "harvests" or takes finished ballots from voters and sends them back on their behalf.
A successful ballot harvesting strategy involves the following steps —
- Identifying non-voters in the party using the registrar of voters’ database.
- Making initial contact via direct mail pieces that provides contact information.
- Scheduling appointments and picking up ballots.
- Making sure the ballot is signed and approved for third-party pickup.
- Submitting harvested ballots.
- Conducting follow up to see if the voter received a text message or email from the Registrar of Voters indicating that the person's vote was received.
It is not, in our opinion, necessary to understand why a voter does or doesn’t vote, only that the voter has a bad track record when it comes to voting. Slow walking someone through the process could get tedious, and time-consuming. However, since most close races, especially local ones, are won or lost by two or three hundred votes, even a minimal effort may make a difference.