Author: Beth Soderberg

Woah–what a primary!

Our incredible team of staff and volunteers gave up weekends and evenings of free time to make sure their friends and classmates had everything they needed to cast their vote this June.

And we did GOTV in style–with home-cooked meals from community members, posted up in the sunshine with friends, and during days of service with classmates.

This spring, our Billings, Bozeman, and Missoula teams made a whopping 16,535 calls and sent 7,032 texts to remind young Montanans to cast their vote in the Primary election.

While I’m looking forward to digging into the data once we know more about how our outreach impacted youth turnout, I’m already thrilled that Montana’s turnout for this primary was 41%.

41% may not seem like a lot of people voting. In fact, I’m sure you’re thinking, “Forty-one percent?! That’s less than half!”

But 41% is up 8 percentage points from the last midterm primary election (2014: 33% turnout; 2010: 32.5% turnout). And that’s a big deal.

While we’re still working towards a world where every young person turns out to vote every single time, whether the race is the primary for the local dog catcher or the country’s President, we also know that increasing voter participation takes a whole-helluva-lotta work.

A whole-helluva-lotta work means making sure young people know the when, where, and how of voting. It also means building trust in our political system and faith in ourselves to vote and to govern. It means talking to candidates about issues important to us and to our friends. It means creating a culture of civic engagement that goes beyond one day every four years.

I hope you’ll continue to lend a hand with this work! We need everyone from donors to volunteers to lasagna bakers to help us continue building this culture of civic engagement.

Our teams are already back at it, registering voters for this fall. Will you join us? DONATE or VOLUNTEER today.

By Erin Miller, Missoula Field Manager

As one of the newest staff members of the Forward Montana team, when I first heard the acronym GOTV, I had about 20 guesses as to what it could be, finally concluding it was probably another Google doc.

My name is Erin and I’m the Missoula Field Manager, which is a fancy way of saying that I lead our field efforts by managing our fellowship, organizer positions, and our stellar internship program (spring, summer, & fall!). Field efforts are the bread and butter of what we at Forward Montana do: We work to get our peers registered to vote, talk to them about the issues they care about (and help with the tools to do something about it), and then we…da da DUN….get young people across Montana to the polls.

So what is GOTV? A hip new band? An error code on your laptop? Neither–it’s our statewide Get Out the Vote campaign. During GOTV, we spend roughly 30 days devoting our time to turning young people out to vote. And who is we? With field managers leading the efforts in Missoula, Bozeman, and Billings, we rely on the diligence and passion of numerous volunteers across the state.

Over the course of GOTV, we call over 13,000 young folks and send over 5,000 text messages. We ask questions like: “Have you received your ballot?” “Do you know where your polling location is?” “Can you commit to voting in the primary?” GOTV is a huge part of Forward MT Foundation’s mission. It’s never enough to simply register young Montanans. We have to ensure their ballot is turned in and their voice is heard–that’s where the change starts.

What would all this work mean without a party at the end?! Join us for our Missoula Primary Election Night Watch Party at the Badlander on Tuesday, June 5th, starting at 8 pm. We’ll be showing the results and talking about ‘em. Plus, drinks and food on us. Happy Primary!