Across the country, political campaign staffers are cautiously prepurchasing a hopeful amount of Champagne and a precautionary amount of tissue boxes in anticipation of the November 3 midterm elections. And while candidates will either toast their supporters or cry into tissues, nonpartisan organizations like ours working for a more representative electorate will be looking to toast something different. Did Americans vote in large numbers?
Did we set new voter turnout records? How many eligible voters were left out of the process, uncontacted and ignored? Unfortunately, many Americans live in communities routinely overlooked by campaigns, civic deserts that are left out of campaign turf wars and political outreach.
They may not have a strong history of voting themselves, or live in communities where participation has historically been low. As voter data gets more sophisticated, campaigns increasingly engage in a form of microtargeting, sending ads exclusively to those who are likely to vote (and likely to support their candidate). Campaigns that parachuted in sometime in 2026 will soon be packing up down the road from these neighborhoods, taking with them spreadsheets, maps and analyses that may lead them to skip many of the same communities in the local elections of 2027 and the presidential election of 2028.
The result is voters and communities without a history of voting, disproportionately lower-income communities, get ignored. Being ignored, they don’t vote and the cycle repeats itself. It’s a cycle worth examining before we start drawing conclusions about who showed up on Election Day, and why.
It’s also a place where nonprofits doing nonpartisan voter engagement can make a big difference. Today, we celebrate the nonprofits that did step up. Looking at the numbers from past elections, we can already identify some of the barriers likely to affect participation this year.
And while who is and is not contacted is a central driver of voter turnout, that voter contact is also intertwined with other barriers. Organizations reaching out to those without a strong history of voting can help them navigate related issues, structural barriers, securing required ID, overcoming language barriers and more. Among people with disabilities who did not vote in 2024, 15.6 percent reported that they were unable to vote because they lacked assistance, according to Rutgers.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
