Voter Registration Drive
Summary Report Back To Our Members

Jack Johnson Island Tour

What Did We Do? We were so excited to be invited to partner with Jack Johnson, All At Once and Kokua Foundation during the Jack Johnson music tour on islands. Thank you to Josh Glasheen from Jack Johnson Music, Natalie McKinney and Kelly Perry from Kokua Foundation and the crew. We were stoked to have seven (yes due to space we were limited to 7) of our core Kanu members to help register voters and talk to an incredibly diverse audience and check out the show. On Oahu, our crew registered 52 voters and signed up 40 people who wanted to receive information on candidates in their districts prior to voting.

What did We Learn? Jumping right in the first night, we quickly learned we needed a tighter message that was tailored to this particular audience, as well as a few logistical factors. We altered the pitch to introducing us as working with Jack Johnson & a quick transition into talking about the people’s agenda and why we need to build bottom up power. Many people were already registered but this was an opportunity to sign them up to receive information from Kanu on candidates in their district before they vote and reminders to vote.

I shared these lessons with the team leader for the second night, Alani Apio. It was great to debrief and strategize for tighter messaging so he could orient volunteers to anticipate the changes. He really helped orient and support others, bringing values in to forming an approach that fit the context (many people would not be engaged in voting). I also want to recognize our core crew; Shannon Hines, Jennifer Halverson-Kuehn, Rachel Harvey, Kaimana Pine, Asia Yeary, and Adam Smith. Watching these seasoned pros run with it and adapt to changing circumstances on their feet was definitely a highlight. I hope they’ll be back for more, as they have so much to offer.

Key Take Away: Overall, our folks had a great experience engaging with people there. It was less about numerical goals, it got volunteers testing out and practicing registering people to vote, as this was our first drive this year. We also learned a lot of attendees were from out of town, many of them registered in other states, or military personnel. Some were also already registered on Oahu. Still, we got a lot of people who wanted to receive candidate information, meaning people are interested in engaging and getting informed before the vote. For staff, it’s about PTCSE (Plan, Train, Coordinate, Support, and Evaluate). Have a plan, but adjust message to context and learn and adapt on the ground. Always evaluate.

University of Hawaii Monoa
What Were The Results?
Student who want info before voting: 271
Students Registered: 279

How Many People Did We Reach?
We did presentations to roughly 55 classrooms. We also reached additional students through tabling sessions and students who took applications and mailed them in directly, which we can’t count. Additionally, one of the professors teaches at community colleges outside of UH Monoa and is signing up students on her own!

Who Participated?
We had a total of 20 people participate: 13 volunteers, 6 Kanu staff, and 1 Kanu board member. These volunteers were amazing, YOU did it! Thank you: Danielle Buysse, Yun-Wen Betty Fletcher, Robyn Petterson, Annie Koh, Dave Spafford, Aubrey Yee, Laura Ruby, Joannie Pan, Jenn Halverson Kuehn, Yun-Wen Betty Fletcher, Aiko Yamashiro, and Laurie Cicotello. I hope you can all make it to the Voter Reg Pau Party this week so we can celebrate with you and hear your lessons learned and talk about next steps.

What Did We Do? How?
We were very excited to be invited in to run a voter registration drive at UH Monoa. Isn’t it amazing when an education institution fully supports and takes action to support their students being educated and able to vote? Wow!
We had considerable support and communications in advance including a broad email to all professors inviting them to participate by allowing us to come into their classrooms, announcements in the student newspaper, and more. We matched professor class requests with student volunteers and Kanu members. We provided training and an easy way to sign up, ongoing support and filling pukas in the schedule, and a drop box location on campus (for easy pick up and drop off of forms). For UH Monoa students, we provided information on how to register to vote, and easy voter registration on the spot, information about the upcoming elections and why we think it’s important for young people to be heard. We also offered students to sign up to receive information on candidates in their districts before they vote and key reminders about elections.

What Did We Learn?
It was critical to have the support and structure of an institution like UH Monoa, helping promote and get the word out to both students and faculty. Thank you Professor Jon Osorio,
Professor Craig Howes, Teri Skillman at Hamilton Library and Stan from the Center for Biography.

Having a training as a way to invite people into an effort and people getting to practice the script and signing each other up was good to build relationships among the group and feel comfortable talking to people about registration and the people’s agenda. It also allowed us to practice training on a group and revise the materials based on people’s questions and feedback. Having an effective and efficient way to match volunteers with classes that was self-coordinated was great. Having the Center for Biographical Research at Henke Hall as a drop site was extremely useful, although I imagine people may have had a hard time finding it the first time. Thanks to Stan, this was instrumental to volunteers getting forms and dropping them off. We also were able to share the video and materials of the training online.

Other Lessons: We did not have time to update the training tip sheet for new audience other than students / UH. We did adapt quickly and updated the tip sheet based on the questions in the training & we developed a ¼ flyer describing our elections-related work for people already registered.

What’s Next? I’m really looking forwarding to debriefing with our volunteers and members from these efforts, to hear lessons learned and feedback as well as talking about next steps in the campaign.