Activating a Working Class Voting Bloc in 2024
United for Respect Education Fund (UFREF), a national grassroots organization, is building a movement
rooted in the innovation, power, and leadership of working people in retail, particularly women and BlPOC people. Spread across urban, rural, and suburban areas, retail workplaces employ 16 million people. Organizing and activating this multiracial, multi-generational workforce is critical to transforming workplaces, our economy, and democracy as our communities face increased polarization, the impact of a devastating global health pandemic, and economic recession.
UFREF is uniquely positioned to reach, agitate, and mobilize this critical low-wage worker base of dropoff voters, moving them to take action in their workplace to fight for better wages, access to healthcare and paid leave, safe and healthy working conditions, and ultimately a voice in workplace solutions and their communities. This key constituency’s fight for workplace democracy is the first step to a pathway in civic engagement and participation where they become trusted messengers and influencers among their peers, local communities, and elected officials. Their personal stories and testimony shape the narrative around public policy and legislation, delineating the bright line for politicians to choose between big corporations driving economic and democratic inequalities or working people. Combined, people working in retail low-wage jobs could transform our democracy by using the power of their 16,000,000 voices to decide elections in their local communities, statewide, and across the country.
Our Civic Engagement Core Strategies
Our vision is to advance a distributed civic engagement organizing program that integrates actions to boost voter participation from a primarily low-wage, majority women and BIPOC voting bloc across urban, rural, and suburban geographies. We move our base through deep relationship building into action and rleverage our poll-tested messaging to turn out this bloc of low-propensity voters.
UFREF’s civic engagement work is grounded in three core strategies:
1) building and activating our membership;
2) a state-focused program that built a base of low-wage workers to vote; and
3) sharing our tactics and learnings with others.
For 2024, we will contact 2.1 million voters across our targeted states of Michigan, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and California.
| State |
Total Voter
Universe
|
Total Contact
Attempts
(Texts & Dials)
|
Total Door
Knocks
|
Total Direct
Voter Contacts
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michigan | 600,000 | 1,800,000 | 50,000 | 1,850,000 |
| Georgia | 600,000 | 1,800,000 | 25,000 | 1,825,000 |
| North Carolina | 300,000 | 900,000 | - | 900,000 |
| Texas | 300,000 | 900,000 | - | 900,000 |
| California | 300,000 | 900,000 | - | 900,000 |
| Total | 2,100,000 | 6,300,000 | 75,000 | 6,375,000 |
2020 & 2022 Civic Engagement Program
Our 2020 civic engagement program, Vote for Respect, reached over 1 million general election voters with 1.6 million texts and dials in Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas. Our distributed relational organizing program built a volunteer base of 600 people through our online volunteer hub, who completed over 5,500 shifts, securing at least 10,000 pledges to vote. The results showed turnout increases of at least 10% in every one of our targeted states, and two of them, Michigan and Georgia.
Our work continued in the Georgia Senate Runoff election in early 2021, where we sent an additional 3.1 million texts and dials to low-wage voters from 250 volunteers. We joined our partners in the state to help boost turnout to record numbers.
We built on this infrastructure for the 2022 program, contacting over 700,000 voters in the same targeted states by sending over 1.1 million texts and dials from 400 volunteers completing 3,000 shifts, and an additional 300,000 texts and dials from 125 volunteers for the 2022 Georgia Senate runoff. Our online program of ads on social media platforms reached 1,275,151 people and had 9,703,986 impressions. Our voter universe had a 50% turnout rate where thousands of sporadic voters voted.
|
Election Year &
Runoffs
|
Voters Contacted |
Voter Contacts
(Texts & Dials)
|
Volunteers |
Shifts Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 1.1 Million | 4.7 Million | 600 | 5,500 |
| 2022 | 700,000 | 1.4 Million | 400 | 3,300 |
Michigan Ballot Initiatives: UFREF also leveraged our program infrastructure to support turnout for local ballot initiatives:
We spearheaded a voter turnout program in coalition with local advocacy groups to educate voters about transit millages (a tax on property to expand public transit) in Oakland and Macomb Counties, the result of which would be the creation of a transit network connecting Detroit and its suburbs. This program contacted 130,000 voters through door-to-door canvassing by volunteers in Metro Detroit and SMS and phone contact.
We also educated voters about Ballot Proposal 3, which amended the state constitution to establish a new individual right to reproductive freedom, including the right to make all decisions about pregnancy and abortion; allowing the state to regulate abortion in some cases; and forbidding prosecution of individuals exercising that right. Working together to lead a voter education program, we contacted 120,000 voters through 200,000 texts and door knocks.
Our 2024 Civic Engagement Program
Building on our highly successful 2020 and 2022 civic engagement programs, United for Respect Education Fund is targeting five states to deepen our voter education, volunteer recruitment, and voter turnout campaigns for the 2024 election cycle. Our program will focus on low-wage workers who have been left behind by traditional civic engagement outreach, reaching urban and rural voters. Our target states also align with places where UFREF is advancing our policy and corporate accountability objectives so that our civic engagement program builds our power and visibility in strategic locations. These states are: Georgia, Michigan, California, North Carolina, and Texas.
Our Relational Organizing Model
Anchored in a strategy led and driven by our leaders, voter education, outreach, and turnout will be pursued through a dedicated relational organizing program that leverages the stories and experiences of our member leaders to move low-wage voters to the polls.
Volunteer Recruitment: Volunteers will be recruited in four ways: our current membership base; an expanded base we will create of recently unemployed retail workers and digital ads; through a low-wage voter universe using Targetsmart data; and through recruitment by leaders of their own personal networks.
Relational Leader Recruitment: Leaders in our program will commit to setting a personal goal of the total number of coworkers, family, and friends they will commit to turning out, being held responsible for their outreach through regular check-ins with electoral organizers, and meeting that goal (actually mapping them).
Voter Protection: Voter protection is incorporated in our program every cycle. We develop voting rights material for each state (also translated into Spanish). Voting protection messaging is in all our voter education materials and DVC conversations, and we train our volunteers and leaders so they can answer baseline questions (e.g. what to bring to the voting booth). We also work directly with local civic engagement coalitions and are connected with the LCCR as well so the more serious legal voting concerns are elevated to attorneys at the voter hotline.
Digital Ads: We will build on the work we did using digital ads last cycle, refining our corporate target agitational messaging as a tool for volunteer recruitment and voter education. Last cycle, we created a range of voter education ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. This cycle, we will continue refining our corporate target agitational messaging as a tool for volunteer recruitment and voter ID.
Message Testing: Use poll-tested messages to motivate voters with education on working-class issues. We will build on our successful 2022 message testing project, which proved that low wage voters were motivated by a message that tied inflation to Wall Street and corporate greed and increased turnout using our trusted messenger strategy by 0.1% over a generic message. We will test the effectiveness of agitational messaging around the influence Walmart, Amazon and Wall Street - and corporate executives specifically - wield in elections. We are further interested in testing the mobilizing effect of a billionaires vs working families frame in our voter outreach and education.
Program Timeline
Our voter contact and relational outreach timeline will be refined in coordination with our table partners in each state as appropriate.
Voter outreach will be conducted in 4 phases for the 2024 General Election:
First Phase - Voter Registration (Jan.- June): Our field program will begin in January, centered around voter registration among our base of big box store workers.
Second Phase - Voter Education (June-Aug.): Voter contact will begin by June and will focus on ballot education.
Third Phase - Early and/or Absentee Voting: This phase of the program will focus on turning out absentee and early voters - when we begin this phase varies by state law.
Fourth Phase (Final Four) - GOTV: Our Get Out the Vote efforts will focus on the last 4 days of the election.
Staffing Structure
The program will be anchored by our national political team with the support of our national digital and organizing team. We also work closely with our multi-cycle data scientist and voter file coordinator who has worked with us since 2020.