Back in 2016, only 56% of voting-age Americans cast a ballot for the election. For everyone that isn’t a math wiz out there, that means 44% of this country stayed home and the odds are pretty good you know one or two of them. So the question is: what have you done to get your family and friends to vote? If your answer is ‘nothing,’ here are some ways to fix that.
- Make it easy. If your loved one has never voted before, they’ve got some hoops to jump through to get started. Do some legwork for them and give them a head start. Political Science Professor Jennifer Erkulwater recommends helping them with “anything that would reduce the ‘costs’ of voting would be helpful: obtaining the paperwork for registering or securing an absentee or mail-in ballot, sharing voting guides, rides to the polls and so forth. ”Be their voting sherpa.
- Share your own plan to vote and ask them to do the same. Sure, they say they're going to vote, but do they even know where their polling place is? Try to get to know their voting plan by sharing yours first. If you tell them your voting plan or put it in writing and prompt them to share theirs. Psychology and data science professor Kevin Lanning says “when we make a commitment to a particular course of action, we’re more likely to follow through on it.”
- Appeal to their sense of civic duty. Have a chat with your family and friends about what being an American means to you, and give a plug for how patriotic casting your ballot feels. And if that doesn’t work, you could try the angle that their vote isn’t just for them, it’s for everyone in their life. Because you can’t go wrong with a good old-fashioned guilt trip.
Source:HuffPost