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Voter Services - Updates from 2023 Annual Report

VOTER REGISTRATION

During the past 12 months over 40 faithful League volunteers registered 1,513 adult citizens to vote.  This is one of the League’s most exciting jobs.

We offered voter registration following 81 naturalization ceremonies and during 23 civic and neighborhood events. Many newly registered citizens agreed to share their contact information in order to receive email or text reminders at election times.  This enables the League to direct new voters to our voter guide and to vote411.org.

The naturalization ceremonies have mostly all been held at the Eagleton Courthouse. During April, June, and July, however, there will be naturalizations at the Art Museum, the Missouri History Museum, the International Institute, and at the Gateway Arch.

LWVSTL offered registration at these community gatherings:  five Juneteenth celebrations, four health fairs, two Photo ID clinics, three senior living and public housing residences, and three libraries.  We also attended two community development events and Dance the Vote at the Missouri History Museum. We never pass up a party.  They are always so welcoming and so much fun.                                                                            -Catherine Stenger and Victoria Turner

High School Voter Registration:

Our youth voter registration continues to grow each year! Many high schools look forward to our voter registration drives and we’ve added a few new schools this year. It’s exciting to see students proudly wear their “I registered to vote” sticker after registering!

Starting in January 2023, I contacted 29 high schools and was able to set up 25 voter registrations. With the help of 27, dedicated volunteers we registered 505 new voters. 

After students register to vote, we share our “Responsible Voter Rock” business cards with information on Vote411.org and many students sign up to our “Get out the Vote” email and text reminders before every election. It's great to see our youth excited about voting!   -Peggy Robb

College VR and Outreach:

The St. Louis Metro League began working with St. Louis Community Colleges again (post-Covid) in the fall semester of 2022.  We registered 168 new student voters and collected 59 Get Out the Vote reminder cards for fall 2022 and spring 2023 school semesters.

During the voter registrations, we noticed that reactions from students about registering were mixed – some were actually excited to register, while others were almost hostile about voting.   Unfortunately, we don’t have time during the registrations to have discussions with students about their views on voting and engagement on public issues.

Therefore, we decided that focus groups might be a good format to give us time to delve more deeply into these subjects with students.  We approached faculty at the schools. One political science professor at Forest Park and one sociology professor at Florissant Valley agreed to allow us to conduct focus groups with their classes at the two schools. 

We learned a lot during these focus groups, including that (i) NPR is for old people, (ii) students get almost all of their political/public issues information from TikTok and Instagram (also a few from YouTube), (iii) issues that greatly concern St. Louis Community College students include worries about how trans children are being treated, abortion/reproductive rights/healthcare, equity in education, banning books and guns; and (iv) students get almost no information on local and state issues but at the same time feel overloaded with the amount of information they get on national and international issues.

We intend on using the information we have gained from the focus groups to create new approaches to engaging students during voter registration drives and in using social media.

In addition to the focus groups, we also want to work with faculty at the colleges to recruit volunteer student voter registrars.  Students are at events and in places where the League could never be, and are in a position to not only register other students, but also friends and family.  We have discussed the volunteer program with faculty and will be working heavily on recruitment in the fall 2023 semester. 

                                                                                                             -Lisa Collier and Mary Toy

SPEAKERS BUREAU

This past year broke all records for the number of Speakers Bureau presentations.  Over sixty were delivered to more than 1,700 audience members.  Many of the recordings were also shown on-line or the recordings were posted on client or LWV sites, although those viewers are not included in the headcount. A large number of the requests were for information on HB1878 which went into effect in August 2022 and changed several aspects of voting law, including the elimination of student IDs as a voting photo ID.  Other topics were the history of women’s voting, how to vote and where to find information on issues and candidates, the importance of voting, youth voting and general civics.  Two particularly memorable presentations were one to the State Convention of the Council for the Blind and one to U.S. citizens who had come to the U.S. as refugees and wanted information on HB1878 voting law changes and ballot issues.  While members of the group spoke English, an interpreter live translated my presentation into their native Chin language.  One attendee asked me what happens to people who do not vote in an election---that was a first.

Speakers Bureau continues to create new relationships for the League.  We gain partnerships and even begin relationships with grant donors through these events.

VOTERS GUIDE

Distribution: As always, volunteers stepped up to distribute voters guides to local libraries, churches, community centers and other locations. Delivery numbers increased with each election last year, in spite of the Post-Dispatch’s decision to drop Warren and Lincoln County races from the printed guide. Their switch to include the guide in the Sunday edition for the April 2023 election rather than in the customary weekday edition allowed it to reach many thousands more subscribers. Another April 2023 change was to print the guides earlier than usual in order to make them available before the start of the two week no-excuse absentee voting period, which also gave us the opportunity to put copies on information tables at events before the election. In addition to the deliveries, we continue to carry some copies in the office for walk-in and ad hoc requests, and to mail copies to those who ask.   

Many thanks to the many volunteers who helped to make this happen!

                                                            -Diane Kasten, Production & Victoria Turner, Distribution

GET-OUT-THE-VOTE (GOTV)

In fiscal year 2022-2023, the GOTV Committee organized efforts for elections in August and November 2022, and March/April 2023.

August 2022 Election – St. Louis City

The goal of our GOTV effort for the August 2022 election was to increase turnout in two St. Louis City wards with very low turnout:  Ward 5 (North City) and Ward 20 (South City). 

• We sent 2,500 handwritten postcards to voters between 18-45 years of age, evenly divided between the two target areas. Due to outstanding support from throughout the League, the 2,500 postcards lasted only days in the office.
• We also placed approximately 80 yard signs promoting voting and the Vote411.org resource.
• Using Outreach Circle for the first time, we sent voter reminders via text to a list of about 150. Crafting and scheduling the message and assigning the lists.  We continued our email voter reminders.

While we were able to easily obtain the voter lists for our target areas, the City had already converted their voter database to the new Ward structure (reducing from 28 to 14 wards.)  While this didn’t hamper our outreach, we were unable to match August 2022 results with prior election data.

November 2022 Election – St. Louis City and County

The LWVSTL grew its outreach to those most impacted by the restrictive photo voter ID required by HB1878.  Due to the dramatic changes in StL City wards from 28 wards to 14 wards, the LWVSTL has initiated a campaign to get every city voter informed about this election with extra reminders. 

We put a lot of effort into refining our target for the postcard campaign, focusing on the same two areas of St. Louis City as we did for the August election: Ward 14 in the north and Wards 7 and 3 in the south. We also targeted the St. Louis County area around the Normandy school district. We refined the lists by age and voter history to zero in on infrequent voters.

• We sent 5,000 postcards divided equally between the city and county lists. Even though this was double the number we sent out in April, the postcards flew out of the League office in about four days. The only downside was that we recovered less in donations for postage, resulting in the committee being over budget.
• We purchased 100 yard signs that we developed with the AAUW, “Your Vote is Your Voice.” These evergreen signs can be used in each election and have been well received. About 80 were placed for the November election.
• We completed our Outreach Circle text campaign, with very few opt-outs.  Email voter reminders continued.
• Various members of the committee submitted letters to the editors of local papers.
• A Senior Outreach Task Force was formed to help seniors get information about the new voter photo id law and how to get on the permanently disabled voter list.

March/April 2023 Elections

The March GOTV efforts focused on St. Louis City, which was dealing with the challenges of new Wards, approval voting, and new polling places. In April, many of the same strategies were used and we returned to the Normandy School District as a focus of our postcard campaign.

Our GOTV efforts were bolstered through funding from a Trio Foundation grant and a private donor who underwrote Metro bus advertising for the spring and fall 2023 elections.

• In March, we developed flyers for city voters to explain approval voting and help them find their (ever changing) polling place. About 500 of these were distributed through a partnership with SLACO.
• Our Metro bus advertising ran through February and March, with 3 bus queens (on the side by the doors) and 2 tails (back of the bus) that ran routes in north city and North County. 
• Large StL City voting yard signs were placed at churches and businesses.
• Our postcard campaign reached nearly 2,500 infrequent voters in each elections.
• Our campaigns for voter reminders -text and email - continued.
• Added webpage, STLvotes.org  
• We reached out to a small number of senior centers, following up on the November 2022 effort. In the course of this effort, we designed two flyers with voter access information, one aimed at senior voters and one aimed at disabled voters. These can now be updated for each election cycle.                                                                                        

                                                                                              -Melissa Moulton and Angie Dunlap

FREE NOTARY: Voters can come to the League office to have absentee ballots notarized
at no cost. A notary will be in the League office from 9:30 am to 3:30 Monday through Friday.

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