Ballot Measures

In the wake of actions taken by the new administration, remembering that advocacy work can have a meaningful impact on the outcomes of elections can be a strong motivator. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and our opponents aren’t going to stop anytime soon.

Ballot language for ballot initiatives matters more than anything else and can make or break your initiative from the beginning. It has long been said that ballot measure language can be the difference between winning and losing. Here are some basics on ballot measure wording and how it can make or break your measure.

As anyone who’s worked on a ballot measure campaign will tell you, ballot measures tend to fly under voters’ radar. You typically need a strong ground game and a dedicated group of local volunteers to be successful. Most ballot measure campaigns also need an element of voter education and persuasion added to their programs. Without it, many voters won’t understand what the measure does and why it’s important. Ballot measures are often the very last thing on the ballot, so sometimes you simply need to remind voters to fill out the entire ballot or to flip the ballot over.

Qualifying a ballot measure is a significant undertaking. Sometimes the most difficult part of a ballot measure campaign is just making it to the ballot. From gathering signatures to overcoming legal hurdles, qualifying an initiative takes planning, time, and (very often) a sizable investment (both in terms of dollars and human capital).

In today’s political climate of partisanship and mistrust, constituents are turning to the ballot measure process to bypass traditional government controls to pass legislation. 

For groups and organizations that are interested in getting a measure on the ballot, signature gathering can be a costly, time-intensive, and pain-staking affair. You’ll need to raise the money to pay an expensive field consultant to manage the process for you. There’s a steady unease about hitting your numbers, and all of this is compounded with the stress of knowing that the success of your effort hangs in the balance.

Tim Gibbs has worked in the public policy sphere for more than 20 years, where he helped pass impactful laws at both the municipal and state levels. In the last five years, Gibbs played a critical role in passing over 100 local ordinances, including successfully advocating against the sale of flavored tobacco products within various urban and rural areas of California.

Testimonials can work wonders for your ballot measure campaign—especially if you’re dealing with an issue that’s abstract or polarizing.

When you get into politics, it’s hard to resist the all too common tunnel vision of focusing only on politics. But be careful – binge watching Veep or The West Wing is not going to help you run a better campaign or organization; nor will reading solely political books. So Here are some of our favorite non-political books. 

In our last blog post, Digital Advocacy: Advertising Campaign Goal Setting Part I,  we talked about how to develop digital advocacy strategy, cost per acquisition (CPA) campaigns, email programs and the best ways to utilize ad testing. In today's post, we take a closer look at using tactics like paid digital advertising, social media and analytics for digital advocacy. You can also read more about this in our latest ebook, Guide to Digital Advocacy.

The lion’s share of your political or advocacy campaign will be spent on message development and saturation. But as Election Day looms, you’ll have to start focusing your efforts on get out the vote/ GOTV. While you should make sure to include the rest of your online platforms in your GOTV efforts, a good place to start is social media. Not surprisingly, it’s a great digital platform for social pressure. You can use social media in a few ways to encourage your target audience to vote.

Member public affairs strategies can be an amazing way to move your issue forward. Membership organizations should have a head start when it comes to public affairs strategies, but that head start is often complicated. Membership organizations tend to have bureaucratic structures that make it difficult to work nimbly, especially when it comes to public affairs. Because of this, some member organizations have avoided using member-based public affairs strategies and they are missing out.