30,000+ Grassroots Election Volunteers Recruited by Common Cause for 2020, Millions of Voters Contacted

In the runup to Election Day, Common Cause, with help from our Election Protection coalition partners, has recruited tens of thousands of nonpartisan volunteers to assist and protect voters during the 2020 election. The ranks of volunteers continue to grow daily through ProtectTheVote.net and have already more than quadrupled the totals from 2016 and 2018. The nonpartisan volunteers are already monitoring early voting sites, assisting voters, tracking and removing social media disinformation online, and even helping voters with ballot curing so that their votes will be counted as they intended.

“We have put thousands of volunteers in the field to protect the vote for years, but growing public concern about threats to our democracy and an increased ability to effectively deploy volunteers has allowed us to expand our program exponentially in 2020,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause. “Common Cause is committed to protecting every voters’ ability to make their voice heard in this pivotal election. Our nonpartisan grassroots efforts will be essential to stopping voter suppression at a time when the right to vote and the integrity of our elections are under attack.”

With just under three weeks before Election Day, the effort has already:

• Recruited more than 30,000 nonpartisan volunteers to monitor voting sites, track social media for disinformation, and directly contact voters via text & phone banking. This is compared to roughly 6,500 volunteers recruited during the 2018 and 2016 cycles.
• Contacted almost 3 million voters in 27 states to give them key information about their right to vote and how to cast their ballot.
• Identified over 3,000 pieces of disinformation related to the election online, removing hundreds of posts that could have reached millions of voters with voting disinformation.
• Developed field programs ready and training in 39 states.
• Trained thousands of poll monitors and roving poll monitors across the country who are monitoring early vote locations. Thousands more will join them on Election Day.
• Had 32,000 people interact with the tools at commoncause.org/vote, including how to register to vote, how to request an absentee ballot, and how to find your polling place.

In the coming days, Common Cause is preparing to launch advertisements focused on GOTV, voter protection, and preparing people to wait for election results in target competitive states and geo targeted at nearly 1,000 polling places across the country on Election Day.

The website to volunteer is ProtectTheVote.net.