ABSTRACT

Turnout! offers strategies for "emergency elections," like the 2020 races, and addresses the nuts-and-bolts for civic groups and individuals to effectively turn out the vote. Indeed, few elections in recent history represent the kind of apocalyptic turning point for our planet and democracy as the present one. Turnout! is both a creative work of political vision combined with a detailed manual for turning out millions of new voters.

Participation at local, state, and federal levels will have an outsized impact on the future of democracy and life itself. The elections also provide an opportunity to power-up social movements that can re-frame and re-define civic participation in an age of extreme inequality, climate change, and pandemics.

Contributors include powerful movement leaders Maria Teresa Kumar (Voto Latino), Aimee Allison (She the People), Winona LaDuke (Honor the Earth), and Matt Nelson (Presente.org); leading public officials advocating greater voter engagement like Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, and councilors Helen Gym and Nikki Fortunato Bas. Turnout! reveals strategies and real-world tactics to mobilize millions of discouraged, apathetic, or suppressed voters, including women, low-income, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQIA+, student and youth, and working-class voters.

part I|19 pages

The Emergency Election

chapter 3|2 pages

To Save Organized Human Society 1

chapter 4|3 pages

Making People Count

The Census and the Vote Matter 1

part II|56 pages

Movements and the Emergency

chapter 8|5 pages

Rocking the Native Vote

chapter 11|8 pages

The Coronavirus and Economic Crisis

Motivating Voters With Public Goods and Economic Justice

chapter 14|4 pages

Rebuilding After COVID-19

Equality, Equity, and a Strong Social Safety Net

chapter 15|4 pages

Excite the Vote

It Takes a Community and a United Front

part III|53 pages

How We Win

chapter 16|5 pages

Vote Is a Verb

Applying Lessons From Social Science to GOTV

chapter 19|5 pages

Winning Alabama, 2017

A Roadmap to Success?

chapter 20|2 pages

The Base Versus the Middle

A False Choice

chapter 21|3 pages

Unleashing Our Secret Weapon

chapter 22|6 pages

Voting Ourselves a Raise

chapter 23|4 pages

Moms for Housing

Inspiring the Movement for Housing as a Human Right