Chasing absentee votes has always been a part of political campaigns.
But in the time of the coronavirus with more than 150,000 Vermonters requesting mail-in ballots, knowing who has and hasn’t sent in their vote might be the difference between winning and losing an election.
For candidates, this has meant investing in more mailings and postcards, while putting in long hours on the phones working down the Vermont Secretary of State’s list of people who have requested, been sent and returned a ballot via mail.
“We’re working with Democratic candidates for the House on reaching out to voters within one to three days of them requesting a ballot to make sure they hear from them before they fill out their ballot and return it to their town clerk,” said Spencer Dole, the House campaign director for the Vermont Democratic Party.
Dole has been telling Democratic candidates for the House to sign up for the secretary of state’s daily email update on absentee ballots data. He has been instructing them to then reach out immediately to constituents who have received ballots.
The Vermont Secretary of State’s Office’s list currently has 85 subscribers. This includes Rebecca Holcombe’s campaign for governor, members of Molly Gray’s and Tim Ashe’s respective teams for the lieutenant governor contest, as well as many candidates for the Vermont House and Senate.
Optimus Consulting, the Washington, D.C., firm Republican Gov. Phil Scott has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout his campaigns, is also a subscriber. Data Trust, which describes itself as “the leading provider” of voter and electoral data to Republican and conservative campaigns, also receives the information.
Dole said that the sheer number of mail-in ballots that have been requested has resulted in a “larger absentee ballot chase program than in past years.”
“The election is somewhat sped up,” he added. “You need to speed up your mail program, speed up your phone calls, speed up getting your yard signs out — everything is just happening earlier in the campaign cycle.”
Rep. Dylan Giambatista, D-Essex Junction, who is running for a Chittenden County Senate seat, said he tries to spend about three hours per night calling people ages 60 and up who have recently requested ballots.
“A phone call that you’re making before somebody returns their absentee ballot — you are trying to make the same impression of you standing outside a polling location and having a conversation before they go in to vote,” Dole said.
Jesse Paul Warren, who is running in the competitive Chittenden 6-5 district Democratic House race in Burlington’s South End, said in a recent interview that “everyone is doing the ballot chasers” and that he has been making it a priority to “follow up” with people who have requested absentee ballots.
Warren added that the real concern is making sure voters send the ballots to their town clerks and don’t simply request them.
“Normally we have a ‘Get Out The Vote’ event as we approach Election Day,” he said. “Now, it’s more like a ‘Mail Back The Vote’ event because I think that’s really the challenge we have this time around — so many people have requested ballots but the challenge is going to be making sure those people return them.”
Former House Campaign director Jim Dandeneau said that candidates should have been starting “Get Out The Vote” efforts since the beginning of July while identifying and making constant contact there base of support.
“It’s basically been a rolling election day for the last month,” he said. “Realistically speaking, the GOTV should have started when the ballots were going out.”
With large numbers of constituents voting throughout the summer instead of waiting until Aug. 11, campaigns have been forced to make sure voter outreach is an around-the-clock operation while trying to allocate resources as effectively as possible.
Matthew Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, said the question he is most interested in is how many people who have requested ballots will actually be voting.
“When you have sort of a rolling voting process, there’s not that focal point that gets people talking about who they’re going to vote for,” Dickinson said. “The question is can you get them to return them.”
Dickinson said the ability for campaigns to target likely voters and to convince people to return their ballots will be where competitive races in the primary and in the general will potentially be won or lost.
“It puts a premium on having a campaign infrastructure that is knowledgeable about the political terrain,” Dickinson said.
“When you move from a persuasion campaign to a turnout campaign — which I think is inevitably what’s going to happen here — the candidates who can most efficiently allocate their resources to get the biggest bang for the buck in terms of ‘who do we call on the phone, who do we reach out to through social media, when do we do it’ — in a particularly low turnout affair that can be the difference between victory and defeat,” he added.
Like Dickinson, others believe that more is needed beyond a basic absentee ballot chasing program, in which more advanced voter analytics are used to strategically communicate with constituents.
“The key to any kind of electoral victory in any competitive race, especially, is going to be advanced data,” said Rep. Heidi E. Scheuermann, R-Stowe, who is running unopposed in the Republican primary.
Scheuermann added that with so many people requesting absentee ballots in the primary and with everyone receiving a ballot in the mail for the November election, traditional ballot chasing will not be helpful.
“Ever since I worked on my first campaign in 2000 — the Jim Jeffords campaign — the absentee ballot chasing was really important,” she said. But that’s nonexistent now because everybody gets a ballot.”
“That data on who the likely voters might be, who are the people on the fence — if your organization has that data, then you’re going to be much further ahead than your opponent if your opponent doesn’t have it,” Scheuermann said.
“The candidate with the better data is by and large going to be the one who’s successful,” she added.
Dandeneau said that for the primary election it is fine to rely on “best practices” for an absentee ballot chasing program — one that consists of more mailings and direct phone calls with constituents. But that strategy will be useless in the general election.
“Even if you’re reaching out to folks who don’t inevitably cast their ballot you’re still being a little bit more targeted and more effective in your voter contact,” said Dandenough of how candidates are navigating the primary.
“For the general election, when everyone’s going to be getting a ballot, obviously that’s out the door,” he said.
