How to Help Your Clients Make Sure Their Vote Counts

You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we share how to help your clients make sure their vote counts. So stay tuned. If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter. It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner, and to have them bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because it's so relevant and timely in this moment. We're a little more than 30 days out from the 2026 elections, and I don't have to tell you there's a lot at stake up and down the ballot. From congressional and Senate races to state legislatures, and on down to city council, county board, mayoral, and school board races. All of them matter. And all of them have the potential to have a big impact on the wellbeing of your clients and their families. Hopefully, most of your clients are already registered to vote, perhaps with your help. Yay. Registration deadlines are about to close in a number of states, but there may still be time to register where you live. So definitely double-check your deadlines and do everything you can to get your clients registered before the deadline. But now it's time to focus on helping your clients make a plan to vote so that they can be assured of their vote counting. That's what we're gonna zero in on this episode. Before I jump in, I want to acknowledge that it's been a couple weeks since the last episode. I've heard from a number of loyal listeners who've checked in to make sure everything's okay, and I want to assure you that the answer to that is yes. But I've needed to take some time recently to help a family member and a close friend who are each dealing with some significant health issues. And honestly, I had to make some difficult choices about what to let go of during that time. I'm absolutely committed to showing up and delivering value to nonprofit leaders through this podcast as consistently as I possibly can, and I plan to continue doing that. That said, over the next couple of months, there might be one or two other missed episodes. If that happens, know that I won't be gone for long, and I'll be back delivering value as quickly as possible. Now let's get into what we came here to talk about. Depending on where you live, there may be minimal barriers to voting or there may be substantial barriers. In either situation, it's important for each voter to have a plan to get their vote counted. We've been hearing a lot about all the maneuvers to try and make it even harder for people to vote. And quite honestly, the people they're trying to make it hardest to vote are the very people that we serve. Because frankly, they're worried that the folks we serve will not vote to keep those folks in power. On the one hand, it's infuriating and demoralizing and incredibly worrisome because if they're successful, that can have really serious implications. But on the other hand, in terms of talking with your clients about the power and importance of their vote, it can actually be sort of a useful conversation point to say, "You know, there's all this stuff going on all over the country to try to make it harder for folks like us to vote. And you know, when somebody's working that hard to make it hard for you to vote, you gotta wonder, what are they so scared of? Hmm. Maybe our votes really do have way more power than we realize. But they realize it, and so they're trying to make it harder for you to use that power. But we're not having that. We wanna make sure we do everything we can to help you make sure your vote counts, because it does have power." As a nonprofit leader, you can play a hugely important role by helping your clients plan their vote, and there are three pieces to that. The first is to make sure that they're really clear about their options for voting and how to do each of those options successfully, whichever one they wanna focus on. You can help them pick a specific date once they know which way they're gonna vote. And you can point them to where they can learn about all the races and candidates on the ballot so that they can be an informed voter, and that they can elect the people that are in alignment with them on the issues they care about. The good news is there's a website that's a one-stop resource for most of this information, So you don't have to go chasing around doing a lot of information gathering. It's really pretty much all in one place, and you just have to go check that out. It's a non-profit, non-partisan operation that has a fabulous array of resources in one place called ballotready.org, and I'll be sure and link that up in the show notes for you. It's got basically everything you're gonna need. You can use this to gather information to share with clients in terms of what are the deadlines, what are the rules, all that. But then the client can also use it to check whether they're registered, to double-check the accuracy of their registration, to look up information about who's on the ballot for their address. And it's really easy, by the way. You just plug in your address. You don't have to give any other information. If you just want to check where you can vote and who's on your ballot, you can get all that by just plugging in your street address. This is great because for helping a client make a plan to vote, the best possible way for this to happen is as a collaborative effort between the two of you. You're supporting and helping, but they're doing the work. You're just asking good questions and providing information and clarifying answers when they need them. The main thing you're doing is asking them, "Have you made your plan to vote yet?" And if the answer is yes, awesome Are you gonna vote early? Yes. Have you picked your day? Oh, well, no, I was just gonna vote early. Pick a day, put it on your calendar. 'Cause you know, stuff always comes up, so pick a day. Decide now what's gonna be the day that is your election day, and you're gonna go vote. And encourage them to put it in their calendar right that minute. It's that kind of encouragement and support that will help them solidify a plan. 'Cause far too many folks mean well. They want to vote, they mean to vote, they have every intention of doing it, and then life happens. If you don't make a plan and you say, "Well, I'm gonna get to it. You know, sometime before the end of October, I'll definitely go do it." You know how it is. The end of October will be here in about 90 seconds, and then you're like, "Oh, dang. I've only got a day or two before they cut off early voting. What am I gonna do now?" So just help people make a plan. It's a huge service simply to help them do that. It doesn't take a lot of time and effort to just ask that one question, "Have you made your plan to vote?" And then a quick couple of follow-up questions to determine if they actually have made a plan, or if their plan is something along the lines of, "Ah, I'm gonna get it done before Election Day." So no, get it on their calendar. And it's okay to nag a little bit about that as long as you do it with the right intention and the right energy. Help them pick that specific time and method. Doesn't mean you're picking it for them. It just means you're poking them a little bit till they make a decision. Till they open up their own calendar and say, "Well, when realistically can I do this? Do I have, like, a two-hour window on someday this week? Oh, wait. When's the early voting thing open? Oh, it closes at 6:00. Well, then I guess that means I can only do it on Saturday. Hmm. Well, there's only, like, three Saturdays left. I guess I'd better do it." All of a sudden, that big month of time spreading out in front of you gets really small, 'cause maybe there's only a handful of times when they can actually go do this. So just help them crystallize that. And once they do, they get it on their calendar, and they'll have it much more clearly in their head. The other big part of making that plan is making sure they're clear about their options for voting and how to do each one of those options. And again, we're really encouraging early voting whenever possible just because too many things can go wrong and interfere with somebody casting their ballot on Election Day. There are gonna be some options in your state for early voting. They vary by state, but they could include in-person, absentee, by mail, and by drop box. If you go to ballotready.org, you'll find that out really fast. and your job is to just get super clear about what the choices are. Let's say you're in a state where they're all available and folks have a lot of choices. Then you'll want to be ready with clear, concise information that explains how each of those work and how to do them. Now, there's a couple of states that only do mail-in ballots, and they don't do in-person anymore. That's important to know. It would be really hard to plan to go down to the polls on November 3rd if it turns out you're in one of the states that only does mail-in ballots. Oops. So you want to make sure you know what the choices are so that you can explain them clearly. And then you absolutely want to have clear and prominently displayed information about all the deadlines attached to those. Generally speaking, the way it works is early voting starts sometime in late September, early October, basically right about now. And then it'll end some point several days before the actual election on November 3rd. Now, depending on where you live, the window for early voting may be very short. In other places, it's very long. You just have to go find out what that is. But again, you don't want somebody making a plan to vote early and then come to find out the day they were gonna go vote, early voting's already over. Better to vote right away, and then if there's some schedule slippage, you still have more chances. You wanna be able to provide clear information on where all the early voting locations are. That would include any in-person locations and any drop box locations. Even better is if you can provide information about any public transit routes that will stop near one or more of the early voting places. And if there aren't any, you need to be ready to let people know that. One of the voter suppression tactics that's become rather popular is to locate both Election Day polling places and early voting polling places as far as possible from public transit. Which starts to dictate who's gonna be able to get there. And then that starts to affect who's able to vote. So you just wanna be aware that physical transportation access to the locations is important, and you wanna be able to share information about that. You definitely wanna be able to share all the rules around each of the different types of early voting that are available in your area. And be advised that some of the rules can be pretty fussy. For example, mail-in balloting rules can be extremely fussy. There's some states where there's two different envelopes involved, an inner and an outer envelope, and one thing has to be done with one, and one thing has to be done with the other. And if they're not all perfect, then that goes in the provisional ballot pile and maybe doesn't ever get counted. So however the client is choosing to vote, we wanna make sure that whatever those rules are, that you've got them written out very clearly in simple, easy to understand language. And go over them with the client. Once they've said, "I wanna do in-person early voting," or, "I wanna do mail-in early voting," then you can just focus on, okay, let's walk through what the process looks like for that thing. Hand them the list of rules, but also flag for them any rules that are kind of places that people tend to get tripped up, like inner and outer envelopes that have to be just so. In general, if you live in a state with a lot of rules around all aspects of voting, it's important not only to make sure your clients understand those rules, but they understand the reason they exist. The more convoluted and complex the voting rules are, the more likely it is that the reason they exist is to suppress the vote. And so if your clients wanna defy and defeat the forces of voter suppression, the forces that wanna disempower them, the most powerful and impactful thing they can do is ensure that everything about their ballot is perfect. And it follows every rule, no matter how ridiculous or unnecessary the rule appears to be. You definitely wanna give information about acceptable forms of ID. There's a couple of things to know about ID. Most states are cool with a driver's license or a state-issued ID card if the person doesn't have a driver's license, but you wanna double-check what is true for your state. And you need to find out what's possible for a person who doesn't possess one of the accepted forms of ID. In some cases, they will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot, but we want to avoid that whenever possible. We really want to set people up to make sure that their vote will be counted. So be very clear about ID requirements and specifically ask the person. Say to them, "You're gonna need some kind of ID in order to vote. Here's how that works with this option you've chosen. Can you come up with one of those forms of ID?" And if not, then you wanna problem solve with them about how they can still vote. Some of those questions may be ones you wanna ask of your local elections office to get really, really clear. 'Cause that can get into the weeds of some very hair-splitting kinds of rules. Do explain what provisional ballots are and how they work. This is an absolute last resort option. We would prefer not to do that ever. But it's important for voters to know that it exists. And particularly in states where there's a lot of voter suppression activity, it's very important that each voter be armed with clear and reliable information so they can stand up for their rights at the polling place. Whether it's early voting or Election Day voting, if they're voting in person and they find themselves in a situation where their ballot is being challenged or their right to vote is being challenged, we want them to know what their rights are. A thing to remember through all of this is, you know, if you're a frequent voter yourself, which I hope you are, you kinda have the routine down, and you don't think about the logistics very hard. But for someone who's a first-time voter or a very infrequent voter, this is really unfamiliar territory. And so things that a frequent voter doesn't even think about, may feel confusing or even intimidating to a first-time voter or an infrequent voter. Particularly if they're an immigrant and are feeling a little vulnerable around that at this time. That can also add a layer of nervousness and trepidation about showing up and voting. Every citizen has the right to vote, and we want every citizen to exercise that right. But more moral support may be needed for some clients. Along similar lines, it's really important to the best of your ability to identify and address any disinformation about voting as it pops up. This stuff usually starts happening in about the week or two before the election, but sometimes earlier. You could be on the lookout for it anytime between now and the election. And it can take a lot of different forms. There have been robocalling scams in past elections where calls were made into Black and brown neighborhoods And they would say things like, "Don't forget to vote on," and then they would give the wrong day. They would give the day after the election actually happens. They even went so far in one case as to pretend to be calling from a civil rights organization that's advocating for that community and saying, "Don't forget how powerful and important your vote is. Be sure to vote on," and then they gave the day after the election. And folks who were motivated to vote because they got that phone call showed up at the polls a day late and their vote was not able to be counted. Sometimes there are flyers that get circulated with just flat out wrong information. The goal is obviously to confuse voters and get them to either not show up or to show up too late. Or to try to intimidate them around immigration status. Even people who on paper have no reason to worry. With all that going on in the background, it's really important to the best of your ability that you're on top of any of those activities, rumors, stuff going on, so you can address it affirmatively with your clients. And say, "Hey, look, you know, this is, again, evidence of just how powerful your vote is. It's so powerful that these folks are terrified of it, and they don't want you to vote. So the best thing you can do is go ahead and vote. And here's what's really real. Here's what the election dates and deadlines actually are. This is how you go and cast your ballot and make sure it counts. We are with you on this every step of the way." Now, for those clients who are just bound and determined that they're gonna vote on Election Day because that's what they have always done and nothing's gonna convince them to vote early. If you've got clients who are in that camp, and they're like, Yep, that's what I wanna do," okay, awesome. Then absolutely ask them, do you know where your polling place is? How are you getting there? Is it close to public transportation? Can you drive yourself there? Can a friend drive you? And if they don't know, then strongly encourage them to figure that out now. 'Cause once they say they're gonna vote on Election Day, they're only giving themselves one chance. And if anything goes wrong, then they missed their chance. Everybody makes their own decisions about this, but then it just becomes 10 times more important to have a fairly redundant plan for how you're gonna vote. So you've done all that. You've facilitated them picking a way that they're gonna vote and the date they're gonna do it. It's in their calendar, and you can even encourage them to do calendar reminders. So the last thing is helping folks be well-informed voters. And again, ballotready.org is absolutely your friend on this. If you wanna go one step further, which I think is super helpful if you can do this, is to provide an actual sample ballot that's a physical replica of what the ballot they're gonna fill out actually looks like. Again, for folks who aren't familiar with voting, that can be just one more kind of intimidating and overwhelming thing, especially if the ballot's got a lot of stuff on it. If it's just two or three races, okay, that's not that hard. But if it's 10 different races, plus three ballot initiatives and a constitutional amendment here and there, all thrown in on a two-sided ballot that goes on forever, that's kind of overwhelming. So it's really helpful for folks to have the opportunity to see it ahead of time and go, "Okay, there's a lot there. I'm gonna have to think through all this stuff." The very easiest way to get your hands on a sample ballot is just go to the local elections office and ask for one. They might even give you a stack of them. But even if they can just give you one that you can photocopy in your office, it's totally fine. It'll have a big sample label smacked across it so there's no danger of it being co-opted into an actual ballot. But it's extremely helpful, and if you can do that, I really encourage it. If not, folks can also enter their address into ballotready.org and it'll give them all the races that are gonna be on their ballot, and it'll give them all the candidates that are running. If there's a ballot initiative, it'll tell them what the ballot initiative is, or constitutional amendment, whatever. It'll tell them everything on their ballot. So they can research this themselves by doing that. Okay. To recap, at a minimum, you wanna make sure that every client is getting a question from you, "Have you made your plan to vote? The election is Tuesday, November 3rd. Have you made your plan to vote? Have you made your plan to vote early?" If they say yes, get a little more detailed. Make sure they've really planned it. Make sure they're clear about all their options for voting and how they can do each of them successfully. it's really important that they understand that all the rules around voting are not suggestions. They are rules that really have to be followed, or chances are good their ballot won't count. So they're clear about their options, they know how to do each of them successfully, they've picked their specific date and the way they're gonna vote, and you've pointed them to where they can learn about all the races and candidates on the ballot so they can be an informed voter and feel really good about when they go to the polls that they are truly making their voice heard. Cause they have thought about this. They know what they care about, and they're doing their best to elect candidates that align as closely as possible to the stuff they care about. That, multiplied by the number of people you serve, is a very powerful collection of voters. And all their voices matter. We spend so much time advocating on clients' behalf. This is their opportunity to 100% advocate on their own behalf. And their vote is just as powerful as the richest person in the country. They each get one vote. There's no difference. The role that you play in helping your clients be confident, ready, prepared, well-informed, and excited voters is incredibly valuable. I hope this has both given you what you need in order to go do this work, and also inspired you to really wanna do everything you can to help your clients take this very empowering action that we get to do just once every couple of years. And this year, it matters more than ever. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.