Sarasota County is next for Florida Vote By Mail
Sarasota County is our 14th in the ongoing project to write fun, friendly notes to Democratic voters encouraging them to enroll in Florida’s fabulous Vote By Mail program.
If you’re new to this, it’s basically a way to get every enrollee a ballot mailed to them by the county automatically. It covers every single election administered by the county, large and small. Regular, runoff, and special. Partisan and non-partisan. For candidates, bond issues, and ballot initiatives. For four years!
Imagine how Democratic voters who enroll with a simple phone call to their county Supervisor of Elections will develop a stronger habit of voting when the ballots just show up in their mailbox every time without them needing to remember to ask. Plenty of proof already exists to show that Vote By Mail enrollees are up to 40% more likely to vote than voters who have to vote in person. That’s just in Presidential elections. When the overall turnout is much smaller for non-Presidential elections, the Vote By Mail participation rates could be much higher because it’s just so convenient to vote from home.
About Sarasota County
Now, Sarasota has some interesting things that make it stand out among the 14 counties we’ve done so far. First, there were nearly 5,000 Democratic voters who live outside of the state and provided that other address as their mailing address instead of their local address where they’re registered to vote. Don’t worry, we’ve set those addresses aside and will be assigning them to a specific group so that we aren’t bombarded with emails every day asking if the out-of-state address is wrong. (Thanks very much to that group of volunteers in NYC for accepting this task!)
Sarasota County is located in Southwest Florida on the Gulf Coast. As of the 2010 US Census, the population was 379,448. Its county seat is Sarasota and its largest city is North Port with an estimated 2016 population of 64,274.
Currently, there are roughly 98,783 Democrats in Sarasota County. 28,374 of those Democrats currently have VBM ballots. That leaves 70,409 Democrats in Sarasota who are not signed up for VBM. Once you eliminate duplicates at the same address, it comes out to 50,557 households. (As I write this post, over 11,000 addresses have already been assigned to some 600+ volunteer writers!)
Importance
Sarasota has a few important elections coming up. They will be holding Municipals Election in the city of Venice in November. Some of you may have written for Sarasota Democrat Margaret Good in her Special Election to Florida State House. Well, she recently announced that she was running to flip the 16th Congressional District!
Getting these Democrats in Sarasota County enrolled now in Vote By Mail will have ongoing benefits starting with greater Dem turnout in November. Then again in the 2020 Dem Primary. And again in the 2020 General Election. Plus any other elections in between and beyond for four years.
Can you think of anything more effective than one postcard to nudge a voter to sign up for Vote By Mail? We’re going to write to every one of Florida’s counties – with your help.
Together, we will do our part to help turn Florida blue in 2020.
Write on!
~Tony The Democrat
Returning writers may request voter addresses for this campaign by using one of the following options
- Text HELLO to (484) 275-2229
- Click http://m.me/AbbyTheAddressBot for Facebook
- Email us at Postcards@TonyTheDemocrat.org
- Click Here
If you are new to us, sign up easily by using one of the following options
- Text JOIN to (484) 275-2229
- Email us at Join@TonyTheDemocrat.org
- Click Here