Mobilizing Black Turnout with Celebrations of Community

• In Event: Explaining Minority Voter Turnout

Abstract

For the first half century of the new United States, voting was done by voice and in public, and with a festive atmosphere. Elections were a chance to party. Turnout was also extremely high, sometimes reaching 85 percent of eligible voters. In contrast, voting today is done privately and sedately, and turnout is far lower. The Party at the Polls series of precinct parties held since 2006 has used this theme to make voting celebratory, holding election day celebrations at randomly selected polling locations. Party at the Mailbox, the brainchild of Black Girls Vote, innovated a similar strategy in June 2020, in order to bring the party to vote-by-mail balloting in Baltimore, Maryland. The effort was enormously successful, increasing turnout by more than 12 percentage-points among low-propensity voters. Voters we spoke to after the election noted how the PATM campaign helped them celebrate voting and celebrate Baltimore. They weren’t thinking of voting (just) as an instrumental act meant to affect the outcome and public policy, or (just) as a duty that they owed their ancestors who fought for the right to do so. They were thinking of voting as a way to celebrate and cement their membership in their community of the city of Baltimore. As a joyful, shared neighborhood event. Despite voting by mail while sheltering in place, PATM made them feel part of something bigger than themselves—that they were voting as a community. PATM was then replicated in November 2020 in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Detroit; in Atlanta in January 2021; and in Richmond, Virginia in November 2021. We review the quantitative and qualitative data from those efforts, supporting our theory of Voting as a Celebration of Community.

Authors

• Melissa R. Michelson, Menlo College

• Ashley CJ Daniels, American Council for Learned Societies

• Stephanie L. DeMora, University of California, Riverside

• Sarah Virginia Hayes, California State University, Fresno