How to help a non-voter realize they want to vote

In the final 100 days of the 2020 Presidential election, I brought a team of coaches and trainers to southeastern Pennsylvania. All were adept at deep canvassing and teaching others how to do it.

Our team of 25 was sponsored by our political action committee, the LGBTQ Connection PAC. We then joined forces with Changing the Conversation Together, a local group committed to defeating Trump in Pennsylvania. Our joint commitment: to reach anti-Trump voters who don’t vote. Most had missed past Presidential elections; we wanted them not to miss this one.

To protect everyone from COVID, we ran trainings outdoors, then met voters outdoors. Throughout, we wore masks and maintained social distancing.

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That’s how I met Constance in southwest Philadelphia. A 30-something woman of color, she smiled when I said hi; she also looked tired. She told me about her military service; that’s how she knew she should vote. But she didn’t want to vote. To her, it felt like settling for the lesser of two evils.

As I listened, what struck me hard—even harder than her words—was the emotion in her voice. She was low on hope.

I stayed quiet for a moment—then replied: “Constance, for me, voting is political, but it’s also personal. I think about the people I love. Today, I’m thinking about my Dad. He died early in 2020 at age 95. He had a good life.” And I told her what it was like visiting my Dad in his final year. His hearing, vision and balance were greatly diminished—almost shot. But his personality, cognition, and sense of humor were shockingly intact.

In earlier years, it only took 30 minutes when Dad and I went out for oatmeal and coffee. Now, it took 90: getting out of the house and into and out of the car had become complex maneuvers. But our conversation hadn’t lost the old pungency and fun. Even at the end, he pushed me to think about how I could be a better brother to my sister Amy, both right then and after he was gone. He asked whether my partner Lyle and I were happy; and he actually wanted to know.

Then I asked Constance: who’s someone you love? She told me about her 14-year-old daughter—a bright, capable, shy girl, doing well in school; and who last year, at age 13, got pregnant. When that happened, Constance was stunned. She herself is in a tough marriage with an angry guy. When she came out on the porch to talk about him, quietly, I wondered if maybe she had given up on happiness for herself.

But Constance refused to give up on a better life for her daughter. Constance’s own mother lives only a few blocks away; the two of them decided they would raise the infant. Now with the baby one year old, great-grandma has weekday duty till Constance gets home from work; then Constance fixes dinner, puts the baby down, makes sure her daughter does her homework. Constance has the baby most weekends.

The result: the daughter remained in school, kept up her grades, stayed focused. Constance felt so strongly that her daughter not marry young. That’s the mistake Constance felt she made.

It was mid-afternoon but the sky turned dark. Constance and I stood on her porch as the rain poured down. I listened to her story, so different from my own; her life, so much harder than mine. Hearing Constance, I thought: we live a world apart.

Yet not entirely. The more we talked, we saw we had something fundamental in common: we are there for the people we love. We stick. We don’t give up.

Hope. When someone has lost it, how do they get it back? Sometimes we think we can rekindle hope in someone else and we offer an encouraging word.

But in my experience, even more often, they find their hope when they talk out loud about a person they love, and someone is listening.

By the end of the conversation, Constance had re-discovered some hope. She saw how remarkably she and her mom had stood by her daughter. Her mood had changed, and she changed her mind. She told me she was going to vote. 

So I registered her to vote, because she was not registered.

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How to offer a non-voter Radical Respect

Everything we do has the potential to communicate respect: our smile; our kind voice; the way we hold our clipboard so it’s not like a barrier; and by what we say, and how attentively we listen.

We’re meeting a stranger, but in deep canvassing, we treat them the same way we would treat a good friend.

All of us know how to show respect but, when we’re in a hurry or when we’re nervous, we’re more likely to “skip to the point.” But instead, with Constance, I didn’t rush. I offered her Radical Respect in three specific ways that matter, especially to people who miss elections.

1.     Talk less about politics and more about love.

Maybe you noticed something unusual about my conversation with Constance. We only talked a few minutes about “politics”: there was little discussion of “issues,” and I never mentioned Biden’s name. Why? Because people who rarely vote have scant political information. They tend to know little about most issues and most candidates.

But non-voters do know the big picture. At this moment in American history, that means they are aware of Trump. Most have strong feelings about him.

Even more important, non-voters know a lot about what matters to them most. If they live on the financial margins, they know how hard it is to get and keep an entry-level job that covers the rent—and they know what it feels like when they have to scramble to keep gas in the car, food on the table. Even people a notch or two more comfortable know they can become vulnerable fast: all it takes is one big medical bill or family emergency.

The counterweight, the best thing in their life, is often their family, their community, the people who count on them, and the people they rely on.

All of us, voters and non-voters, know the word “love.” We often believe life wouldn’t be worth much without it. That’s why it’s crucial I said “love,” not some lesser word. Once I said “love” and talked about my Dad, Constance immediately knew what I was talking about. She thinks about love every day as she helps her daughter. No wonder she had a lot to say.

As Constance talked about love, I noticed that she expressed hopelessness about big parts of her life—her marriage, the pregnancy—not just about politics. Yet only with politics had she given up.

With her pregnant daughter, Constance didn’t give up. She didn’t say to herself: all of my options suck, so I will choose none of them. The stakes were too high. She picked the option that sucked the least.

As Constance and I talked, maybe for the first time, she realized that voting is a gift we give to the people we love. She didn’t need to love one of the candidates. She loved her daughter and needed to vote for her. Constance then picked the option that sucked the least. She got ready to vote for Biden.

2.     First, connect. Only later (and only if necessary), correct.

If you think back to the beginning of my conversation with Constance, she said she didn’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils. If you have ever heard those words when talking politics with someone, how did you respond? What might you have said to Constance?

·      Biden isn’t evil; he’s good on student debt, jobs, climate change and health care.

·      Trump is more than evil; he’s a Fascist and he’ll destroy this country.

·      Whether you like Biden or not, you’ve got to vote, the election is so close!

You might be tempted to say any of these things. But if someone like Constance feels that you or I are talking at her—talking down to her—we stop the conversation before it starts. Even when we feel sure we’re right, telling the other person to change often falls flat. “Telling” is a weak way to teach. Correction is a lousy way to communicate respect.

Therapists sometimes put it this way:  you can be right, or you can be in a relationship. We need the relationship.

Yet most campaigns don’t prioritize dialogue; they “tell” the other person what to do in TV ads, internet ads, junk mail, unsolicited texts, robocalls, and phone calls where callers follow the script like a robot. In specific circumstances, each of these tactics can have value, but they obviously don’t affect most of the people at high risk of not voting: after all, year after year for over a century at least one-third of America’s eligible voters continue to not vote, even for President.

That’s why, instead of offering correction—instead of assuming Constance would change because I told her to—I talked about love. Right away, Constance and I were talking about someone and something important to each of us.

Constance, like most of us, took action when her daughter’s unintended pregnancy threatened her future. In my own life, this reminds me of when my sister Amy and I were young, playing in a community pool. Our Mom was nearby, lying on a beach chair, eyes closed, half-drowsing. Suddenly Amy uttered the tiniest yelp; she was going under. Faster than I’ve ever seen Mom move, she dove in and got Amy out—even though Mom was an iffy swimmer and wearing an anniversary gift from Dad, a lovely watch that never ticked again.

Constance reminded herself how decisive she could be, how good it felt to act when her daughter was in trouble.

Constance reminded me that I am a much more helpful human being when I am fast to connect, much slower to correct.

3.     Lead with respect to connect across lines of difference.

Constance is young and Black. I am old and white. Those differences were immediately evident to both of us, but they did not divide us. Why? Because it turns out that, our vulnerability and willingness to listen matter more than our identity. Those qualities communicate unconditional respect; the other person realizes that we aren’t there to judge them or shame them. This is why the studies of deep canvassing show that our ability to persuade is identical whether or not the other person shares our race, gender, age, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

In some circumstances, identity can mean a lot. Differences between people are real.

But Radical Respect makes it easier for two people to notice their similarities, not just their differences. That’s why our willingness to offer Radical Respect is a better predictor of whether we can help someone change their mind.

That’s why I deep canvass. When I talk with someone like Constance, I win us a vote and I’m reminded of Adrienne Rich’s moving poem, Dreams Before Waking:

What would it mean to live

in a city whose people were changing

each other’s despair into hope?—

You yourself must change it.—

What would it feel like to know your country was changing?—

You yourself must change it.—

Though your life felt arduous

new and unmapped and strange

What would it mean to stand on the first

page to the end of despair?

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Something you can try

On Saturday, September 23 at 2 p.m. eastern time, I’m hosting a highly participatory Zoom for all interested readers to ask questions or discuss any aspect of deep canvassing. The Zoom is free, but space is limited. To register, please email deepcanvass@gmail.com with your name, email, and a sentence about what’s on your mind.