The top 3 most impactful, meaningful things you can do right now to help Joe Biden win

TLDR: Do this or this. If you can’t, then do this or this. Also, don’t forget to do this.

Let’s send ’em to the White House.

Today is August 29, 2020. There are 66 days until the 2020 Presidential election.

There are lots of ways to get involved with the Biden campaign. The Biden campaign’s official Take Action page is actually quite informative and should be the first place anyone looks, but since you probably were looking for a bit more commentary, I’ll try to provide a bit more detail here. Read on for the top 3 things you can do to defeat Donald Trump.

Voter contact is the single most effective lever that actually moves the needle.

Democracy in the US is by its very nature inefficient. Votes in swing states matter more than votes in red or blue states. Voting itself is quite difficult and given the friction, voter turnout is very low, with ~60% of eligible voters voting in 2016. Furthermore, while over 70% of people age 65+ voted, only 40% of those aged 18–29 voted. Younger populations vote more for Democrats than Republicans at overwhelming margins. This means that the winning votes are actually already out there! We just have to get them!

There’s a wealth of research and literature that shows that direct voter contact and having 1:1 conversations with voters is the best way to win elections. More than paid media, digital ads, yard signs, or anything else passive. Simply put — talking to a real person is the only thing that truly has behavioral and attitudinal differences. Remember — the winning votes are actually already out there! We just have to get them!

If it weren’t for COVID-19, I personally would be traveling to swing states and working with the local Biden campaign field offices to knock on doors of likely Democratic voters (powered by data science teams crunching the numbers on field data gathered every day by field organizers and volunteers), firing them up and reminding them to vote. The campaign makes volunteering super easy and gives you all the tools you need to be successful. Given the pandemic, the campaign has shifted to making phone calls and sending texts to voters in swing states.

Luckily, we can do all of this while sheltered-in-place. Anytime, anywhere. The campaign provides an easy way to sign up, get trained, and start turning out Democratic votes ASAP. You will rarely be speaking to Trump voters — the campaign knows that it’s not an efficient use of time to try to persuade the MAGA crowd. Rather — the winning votes are actually already out there! We just have to get them!

Sign up here and save democracy on your own time, from the comfort of your own home. Just in case you missed it: the winning votes are actually already out there! We just have to get them!

You can also find local events of people who are doing virtual phone banks and text banks together which can be more fun than doing it yourself — you hop on Zoom w/ a bunch of people in your area and do it all together, socially distanced.

If you can’t do voter contact, please make sure to give as much as possible.

Small/mid-sized donations to campaigns are less effective than volunteer work — which makes conceptual sense once you realize that all of that money goes to hiring field staff who are recruiting people to do the above voter contact, ad buys, digital campaigns, etc — it’s not like the money alone will power Biden to a win (I mean… just look at the Bloomberg or Steyer campaigns)…

But if you must give because you don’t have time — please please please give what you can… then give some more. You can also become a grassroots fundraiser — the campaign provides some really neat tools here to get your own referral links, organize local events, etc. which can be really fun if you like the social nature of fundraising.

Above all else… please do make sure to vote.

Thanks for reading and no matter what please make sure to vote. I’ll wrap this up with a funny story from 2016 — I quit my job in the SF Bay Area to organize for Hillary in Hampton Roads, Virginia. I got so busy towards election day that I almost forgot to cast my own ballot — putting it in the mail a day before. Given the capacity issues the USPS is facing — voting early will ensure your own vote counts.

Voting absentee to Fremont, CA from a HFA campaign office in Hampton, VA on Nov. 7, 2016 — just in the nick of time. Lesson learned — don’t forget to vote!

Thanks for doing your part in saving democracy. Let’s try to salvage what we can from 2020.

Feel free to ask me if you have any questions. I’d love to answer them.