[courtesy of California Progress Report]

The James Irvine Foundation has released a 44 page report, "New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization: A Report on the California Votes Initiative",that is the product of a multi-year study of infrequent voters.

The authors of this report, Melissa R. Michelson of California State University East Bay,Lisa García Bedolla of the University of California at Irvine, and Donald P. Green of Yale University are all respected scholars. Green is the author of Get Out The Vote! How to Increase Voter Turnout, published in 2004 by the Brookings Institution Press.

While the information here is of tremendous interest to those involved in the hurly burly of political campaigns, there is a very important point they make as well: The electorate that is turning out does not represent California's diversity. At the beginning of the report, they say:

by Susan Rowe [courtesy of Blog for America]

Closing the Voter Turnout Gap: A Report on the California Votes Initiative

Tuesday, November 13, 2007 10:00 - 11:00 AM

Which tactics are most effective in turning out ethnic communities on Election Day? Can we significantly increase voting in historically low turnout communities? Can volunteer phonebanks be as effective as door-to-door canvassing? How useful are doorhangers and direct mail?

Find out more from experts and community leaders at a special briefing hosted by The James Irvine Foundation. The briefings will include results from extensive research on minority voter outreach efforts in 2006 that reached more than 80,000 infrequent voters in Southern California and the Central Valley.

Closing the Voter Turnout Gap: A Report on the California Votes Initiative

Location: Council Chambers
Fresno City Hall
2600 Fresno Street
Fresno, CA 93721

RSVP: For more information or to RSVP contact CAVotes@irvine.org or Karen Pogoda at 323-254-5700. Metered street parking is available for visitors to City Hall. Refreshments will be provided.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Jan Adams
Happening Here

Last week I heard political scientists Melissa Michelson (CSU-East Bay), Lisa Garcia Bedolla (UC-Irvine) and Donald Green (Yale) present preliminary findings from their research on which methods used by community organizations among James Irvine Foundation grantees in the California Votes Initiative really worked to increase voter turnout. The research involved doing randomized trials of turnout techniques on low propensity voters using the community groups as campaign labor.

Folks interested in the mechanics of campaigns need to think about these findings through a reality filter -- maximizing turnout is seldom a campaign goal. Campaigns are about maximizing the right turnout, the turnout of voters on our side. (Remember what Karl Rove thought U.S. Attorneys ought to be doing.) Nonetheless, these social science observations can help us think about what we do.

The academics assured the audience that they had not found anything startlingly different from the findings in a previous book by Green and Alan Gerber which I have discussed here. But they brought some nuances and additional certainty about previous findings.

What doesn't work