What Every Employer Should Do to Encourage Every Eligible Employee to Vote:
- Establish consensus in the senior leadership team on the importance of all eligible employees voting in every election (federal, state, local, primaries, runoffs), and gain commitment to take action on a regular and consistent basis.
- Consider the use of an outside resource like the Voter Awareness Council to assist in your program.
- VAC recommends that your organization remain neutral, non-partisan, and unbiased at all times. Your role is as a motivator, facilitator and information provider. Corporate positions or recommendations may be useful on bond issues or candidates that have a direct impact on your entity, but you can’t be perceived as telling employees how to vote.
- Announce to the entire employee base the commitment from senior leadership for an ongoing “get out the vote” campaign.
- Establish a “get out the vote” action group, with senior leadership oversight, comprised of a cross-section representative group of interested employees to take ownership for the initiative.
- Develop an internal communication strategy using meetings, videos, intranet, text messages, social media, bulletin boards, hallway and work room monitors — any and all applicable communications tools.
- Strive for 100% registration among all eligible employees and provide registration information and tools. Consider having a few employees become certified registrars to facilitate registration on site.
- Conduct sessions with employees for voter registration and impartial ballot review.
- Post every upcoming election a week or two prior to the start of early voting.
- Provide (www.vactx.org and others as needed) links to sample ballots, voting times and locations, candidate and issues information.
- Invite guest speakers and/or candidates to visit with employees during breakfast seminars or luncheon forums on select key ballot items.
- Encourage employees to vote during early voting, allow/encourage employees to vote anytime during the day that work demands will permit.
- Consider offering scheduled shuttle transportation to voting locations, van pools, etc.
- On Election Day, have frequent reminders all day to encourage voting, provide access so that employees can find their precinct location if they do not already know, see relevant ideas in 12 and 13 above.
- Consider keeping score, report back after each election on what percentage of your team voted, and display running bar-chart comparisons to show trends.