How to Organize the Youth Vote During a Global Pandemic

Advice from a 20-year-old former Biden Staffer

Young people are at the heart of every political moment in our country’s history. We have an unending energy, social networks, and scrappiness that makes us an undeniable source of political power.

Yet, historically, Democrats and Republicans neglect our voting bloc, writing us off as an ‘unworthy investment’ due to the mounting structural and logistical barriers we face. (Learn more here.) There was no precedent for how to organize one of the most neglected voting blocs during a global pandemic, so my team at Biden-Harris for Michigan built it together.

The key to my team’s success was a robust relational organizing program and an aggressive social media volunteer recruitment strategy.

Instagram, Instagram. Instagram.

Instagram accounts for each school were essential to our Youth Vote operation. These Instagram pages included school-specific events, voting locations, and team photos and were largely how we built culture and community in a virtual setting. These accounts were looked at as our team’s “home base.” They were also where students signed up to volunteer, where we answered voting FAQs, advertised the Fellowship Program, registered students to vote, and persuaded them to vote for Joe Biden and Democrats down the ballot.

It was vital to the success of the program that we kept these pages active. We created unique content, posted often, leaned into memes, and made it look professional but still fun and youthful.

I. Instagram DMs.

We spent 4–6 hours daily DMing hundreds of students to engage them with the campaign. Nearly every volunteer I recruited came from a DM.

This is how we did it:

1. Find the school's official Instagram account (Ex: @easternmichigan)
2. Go into their list of followers and search for the school’s name/ abbreviated name (Ex, @emu or @eastern). You will find dozens of school organizations/ department Instagram accounts.
3. Sift through the results and find campus organizations that have public Instagram accounts. Pro Tip: Start with progressive-leaning organizations like Planned Parenthood, SunriseMovement, etc. Then, move toward more general groups such as Theater or Student Government Organizations, etc.
4. Once you have found an organization, go through the account’s following/follower list + the comment/ like section to find active followers and begin DMing these students. Pro Tip: use your own personal Instagram account and keep it public. This helps the person you are contacting know that you aren’t a bot.

III. What should I say in these DMs?

Our DM’s changed throughout the campaign cycle. We pushed for voter registration, early voting, and event/volunteer recruitment.

Here are some tips:

1. Use DM’s to build a diverse team that truly reflects America. Campaigns tend to skew white and upper class, and this is no secret. Campaigns thinking about it the right way are constantly grappling with how they can grow racially, socially, and economically diverse teams — and Social Media is an excellent way to do that. For example, the student working two jobs probably won’t pass your table at the tailgate, but they will see your DM. It is the same for the students commuting to school who won’t get their door knocked by the student volunteers’ dorm storming campus, but they will see your notification on their phone.
2. Be yourself, and NOT a bot. This is rule number one and most important. No one will respond if they think you are a bot and/or selling them into a pyramid scheme. So talk to them as if you would a friend — use emojis, text abbreviations, triple that exclamation point “!!!”, and type in all lowercase letters. Just lean into your personality and be yourself. You will get a much higher contact rate that way.
3. Include Graphics in your DMs. Graphics are extremely helpful because 1) they liven up a DM, 2) they help you immediately cover all the FAQs, and 3) they are an easy way for the student to share the info with friends. For example, if you are DMing students about voter registration, you should make a graphic that covers questions like how to register to vote, when the deadlines are, how to check if I am registered, where I can vote, etc.
4. Go into the DM with confidence. Remember that the work that we are doing is SO important. We are on the political frontlines, and the work we do or don’t do has the power to sway elections. You are not bugging them by sliding into a DM. You are doing them a massive service by ensuring they have the correct tools and resources to be a part of our democracy.