Increase Professional Association Voter Turnout
Voter turnout is often seen as the key indicator of member-engagement with a professional association. Increasing voter turnout brings more legitimacy to the decisions being made by the elected directors, as well as any decisions made by the member base as a whole. Here we explain how to increase voter turnout specifically within your professional association.
Helpful Tips to Increase your Turnout
- Create an election website
- Sending too much, or too little information can damage your election turnout. By creating a permanent link to upcoming elections you can send all queries and visitors to the same place so that they can gather information at their pleasure.
- Address voters personally
- A minor point that holds immense importance. Being addressed personally in a letter or email can have a significant impact on turnout.
- Stress the importance of your upcoming elections
- This is a point that can be easily overlooked. As an election manager, you will be fully aware of the different candidates. Your knowledge of your association can e be invaluable here. Include an election preview from your election committee outlining the key aspects of the latest election.
- Remember that voters may be dissuaded by marketing that is biased
- Optimise the electoral roll
- Dividing up your member list into categories can have a marked impact on turnout. By segmenting voters by region, exact profession or age you will be able to emphasise different issues that are important for individual groups.
Make the Switch to Online Voting
Remember that your members are not necessarily disinterested, they just need to fit voting into their busy schedules.
This is where online elections can really help - for voters it is extremely simple. Voting credentials arrive in their email inbox with a link to the online voting platform. They simply click on the link and input their login details and cast their ballots.
Online elections are also considerably easier to manage and set up than paper, or AGM voting. This leaves you open to market your election on your website, through colleagues and prominent members.
Communication & Voter Fatigue
Everyone hates having their inboxes bombarded by too many newsletters and announcements. When attempting to increase turnout and engagement within your professional association, you want to walk the line between engaging some, while not pestering others. For a standard election of one week, we recommend sending out one email reminder to those voters who have not voted in your election.