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State Democrats Use "Social Pressure" to Get Out the Vote

Jeff Cohen
/
WNPR

Kiernan Majerus-Collins is a Democrat from West Hartford. He's gotten two mailers from state Democrats and one from an outside organization, and they want him to know that they're watching his voting habits. 

"The tone of the message of all of the mailers was that I have failed in my duty to vote and that I really should be trying to improve my voting record," he said.  "It was like I was getting a report card."

The problem is that he's only 19. And the mailing listed him as AWOL on Election Day 2008.

"I would have been more than happy to vote in the 2008 election," Majerus-Collins said.  "I thought that then Sen. Obama was a great candidate and I would have loved to vote for him. But I was 13."

So the mailers had some factual issues. But at least one of them is kind of threatening. It says that while his votes are private, whether or not he votes is a public record. And, quote: "We're sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to publicize who does and does not vote."

Credit Jeff Cohen / WNPR
/
WNPR
The inside of the mailer from state Democrats received at the reporter's house.

Then it gets creepier. The letter says the Democrats are going to review records to see if he votes this election. Should he not, the party says it will be disappointed.

Democrats say they're trying to engage voters, not scare them.

"The foundation of our democracy is a citizen's right to vote," said Devon Puglia, communications director for the state Democrats.  "And we want every Democrat to show up on Tuesday."

Puglia says this kind of mailer gets out the vote. Apparently, he's right. A 2008 study showed that the more you tell voters about their behavior and that of their neighbors, the more likely they are to vote. Chris Larimer is an associate professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa. He is one of the three authors of that report. It shows that voters who get the most pressure have an 8 percent higher turnout number than those who got no pressure at all.

"That's right, that was an 8.1 percentage point effect, which is, as we mention in the article, similar to what you see with door-to-door canvassing," Larimer said.  "But doing this mailer is much cheaper than training canvassers and taking the time to go knock on doors."

Larimer says these kinds of mailers are being used by both major parties in states across the country. 

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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