Party at the Mailbox: Mobilizing Black Voters with Celebrations of Community

• In Event: The Role of Education in Civic Engagement

Abstract

For the first half century of the new United States, voting was done by voice and in public, and with a festive atmosphere. Turnout was also extremely high. In contrast, voting today is done privately and sedately, and turnout is far lower. Those seeking to increase participation have tested a variety of tactics and messages, including bringing back the festive community celebrations of the early 19th century. Making elections a celebratory community event increases turnout. Most GOTV experiments have not focused on Black voters, despite their increasingly visible role in U.S. politics. The very limited number of published RCTs examining Black GOTV efforts does not reflect the high level of mobilization activity regularly delivered by Black-serving organizations, including churches. Given the strong tradition among many Black Americans of voting as a celebration of community, we hypothesize that efforts to cultivate a festive atmosphere around an election will be particularly effective when targeting Black voters. But, while everyone loves a party, they are not always feasible or appropriate. In 2020 in particular, precautions taken to keep voters safe during the pandemic included reduced in-person voting options and an increased emphasis on vote-by-mail. Community organizations with plans to engage in door-to-door canvassing and other best practices for increasing voter turnout had to innovate with new, pandemic-safe methods of registering and mobilizing eligible voters. One notable innovation came from Black Girls Vote, a non-partisan community organization based in Baltimore. Their pilot project, Party at the Mailbox, sought to increase vote-by-mail participation in the June 2 primary. Reflecting the decrease in African American turnout in 2016 compared to the previous two presidential elections, the project also sought specifically to shift attitudes and identities—to create a greater sense of identity as a voter and to generate feelings of shared community. We conducted a multi-method evaluation of the Party at the Mailbox pilot, using a randomized controlled trial, an Internet survey, one-on-one interviews with registered voters and community leaders, and focus groups. We documented significant shifts in attitudes and behavior, including a 12.4 percentage-point increase in voter turnout among low-propensity voters who shared a household with someone who participated in the project. We replicated the effort for the general election in November, increasing voter turnout among low-propensity household members by 5.2 percentage-points. In this paper, we share details and results from the Party at the Mailbox project and discuss how it provides insight into mechanisms of mobilizing low-propensity Black voters.

Authors

• Melissa R. Michelson, Menlo College

• Stephanie L. DeMora, University of California, Riverside

• Sarah Virginia Hayes, California State University, Fresno

• Ashley CJ Daniels, American Council for Learned Societies