Connecting the Dots Inside a Pyramid of Voters
School Administrator, December 2022
Minnesota school districts are not allowed to advocate for school tax passage in elections. The role of supportive advocacy falls to some form of “Vote Yes” group within the community. This was the approach in the Shakopee Public Schools’ 2021 operating levy.
Shakopee’s Vote Yes Committee was designed intentionally as a pyramidal structure. This strategy supported a primary focus on person-to-person engagement, especially among parents with students enrolled in the 8,000-student district. Conceptually, the design featured three co-chairs who provided leadership and support for the logistics and data needed for thousands of person-to-person contacts moving from the top to the bottom of the pyramid.
Twenty “lead connectors” were recruited, each of whom was responsible for 10 “connectors.” The strategy was to recruit and train a total of 200 connectors divided into 20 groups of 10 persons. Each of these 200 connectors made dozens of personal contacts — eventually reaching a total of 4,000 targeted voters.
These voters were placed into different groups primarily based on the VAN scores (Voter Activation Network) in the voter database. The higher the VAN score, the more likely groups of registered voters would support the ballot proposal.
Parents of enrolled students were given higher priority than just the VAN scores alone would have suggested. Targeted parent lists were further delineated based on their elementary school attendance area. These locations were easily identified using the targeted lists inside the 5Maps GIS platform. The Vote Yes Committee leaders believed even if a connector reaching out to a targeted voter had never met that individual, they could start with the common bond of having enrolled students in the same elementary school.
Empowering Work
Pyramid strategies have inherent limitations since not every connector performed at 100 percent. However, this strategic approach generated thousands of connecting-the-dots, person-to-person engagements. In addition, at least one positive unintended outcome also emerged. Many residents reported they felt empowered as volunteers, resulting in additional engagement advocating on behalf of the operating levy during the final weeks leading up to the election. These self-empowered, personal connections appear to have impacted the voting results.
At the heart of the pyramidal setup of the Shakopee Vote Yes Committee was alignment and amplification of the key component of school district communication. The core communication centered on the reality that the district faced a critical fork in the road. Rejection of the proposed tax levy would mean significant additional budget cuts while approval of the needed additional revenue would turn teaching and learning in a hopeful direction.
The citizens’ committee, in contrast to school district messaging, added a strong dose of advocacy. This connecting-the-dots strategy was the campaign’s engine for delivering clear, concise, consistent and compelling communication.
The Shakopee Vote Yes Committee also encouraged potential voters to take advantage of early voting — mail-in or walk-in — prior to Election Day, which included a couple of Saturday dates for early ballots. These efforts proved to be highly successful. Early voting resulted in 2,700 votes, totaling 35 percent of all votes cast in the election.
Pushing early voting proved to be a sound campaign strategy because the percentage of early votes marked “yes” was significantly higher than the overall percentage of support. An impressive 83.5 percent of early votes were marked “yes” for question 1 and 81 percent for question 2.
Targeted Resources
Behind the scenes, the committee used data collection efforts when people reported they would be voting “yes“ and they would be voting early. In its simplest form, this was a real-time count of estimated affirmative votes already in the ballot box and a calculation of how many votes still were needed to reach the goal of 5,000. It also was a means of directing scarce resources with more precision by conducting quick check-ins with identified yes voters while freeing up time and energy for new and deeper person-to-person connections with voters who had not yet indicated their support for the tax election.
— DON LIFTO AND MIKE REDMOND