‘Are You Registered to Vote? Please Confirm.’

By JW August
 
If you check your email, you don’t have to be told election time is upon us. Please look at the email I received from the AFL-CIO (at end of article).  I can guess where they are coming from politically (Democratic) but what interests me is the service performed for me.  It quickly confirmed my registration details.  It is a more sophisticated “get out the vote” campaign.  Try it yourself.  But of course, the unions will have my voting and contact information.

I sent two widely respected academics the email and asked them if this AFL-CIO message demonstrates a new strategy for getting information on voters.  Both said the same thing, Carl Luna, the Director of the Institute for Civil Civic Engagement, also a professor at the University of San Diego and Thad Kousser, Co-Director for the Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections and a professor of political science at UC San Diego.

Quoting from Professor Kousser,

“My understanding is that this is a common approach that many organizations have been using for a long time.  And even if you don’t register through an organization, campaigns all can access your registration information and contact you (registration files have been the basis of precinct walking sheets since their inception in Santa Monica in the late 1970s”

Going a step further asked chat.gpt to do something I haven’t the time or resources for.  I asked it to research how many political emails do folks receive going into election time. (I think its important journalists always make clear when research is done by AI.) There was some back and forth with the AI website and it said initially “there is no authoritative national count of political emails received per voter per day”.

The AI source,chatGPT did provide me information from what they said was a Politco story that reported  “that the Biden campaign averaged 4–5 emails per day to supporters during May 2024 and increased to 8–9 per day immediately after the June debate.”   I checked, sure enough, Politico reported the information on July 2, 2024

After more questions and responses, the site found that in the seven to ten days before elections political emails internet users would receive three to eight political emails a day.  Should you be a “highly politically engaged”  you can expect ten to 20 emails a day before the election.  That’s a ‘guess-estimate’ not solid fact, as the site told me it “was an extrapolation” from three sources, Derek Willis Political Email Archie, the Princeton/ Narayanan academic study of the 2020 election and Politico’s reporting.

Union Email

Hi jw,

Union members know better than anyone how important it is to make our voices heard at the ballot box. Voting is the heart of our democratic process—and our labor movement’s, too.

That’s why we’re celebrating National Voter Registration Day, the single largest voter registration day in the country. Today’s the day to make sure your family, co-workers, neighbors and friends who care about electing pro-worker candidates are ready and registered to vote!

Many states have voter registration deadlines coming up in the next few weeks, some as early as the first week of October.

Will you take a moment to check your voter registration status?
CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION
After you fill out the form, you’ll see voting dates and deadlines for your state—be sure to write them down or take a screenshot! It’s really important to check your voter status early, so you don’t miss any registration deadlines or run into surprises when it’s time to vote.

We need every vote this year to send leaders to Washington who will work for the people who make this country run, not the greedy CEOs and billionaires who take all the profits. But the rich and powerful, and their allies in Congress and the White House, are trying to make it harder for working people to vote. This means we have to be more ready and more organized than ever.

The first step in making a plan to vote for pro-worker candidates this November is checking and updating your voter registration. Thank you for getting ready to vote in November!

In solidarity,

Team AFL-CIO