Increase voter participation rates among infrequent voters, particularly in low-income and ethnic communities.

California's electorate does not fully represent the population of California adults eligible to vote. California voters as a group tend to be more affluent and are more likely to be white than the eligible adult population. The policy preferences of likely voters are quite different than those of the eligible adult population, as shown by the Public Policy Institute of California's 2006 study, "California's Exclusive Electorate," and as a result, decision making on important state issues does not reflect the full population's needs and interests.

In January 2006, The James Irvine Foundation launched the California Votes Initiative, designed to increase voter participation among infrequent voters — particularly those in low-income and ethnic communities — in the San Joaquin Valley and the Southern California counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino. The initiative supports nine organizations, which are conducting nonpartisan outreach using a variety of approaches, including congregation-based outreach, neighborhood-based outreach, live phone calls, voter forums, multilingual materials and information provided via ethnic and mainstream media. The initiative is also designed to discern and share best practices in nonpartisan voter outreach through an accompanying evaluation component.

The California Votes Initiative is a project of Irvine's California Perspectives program, which aims to improve public decision making on significant state issues by informing public understanding, promoting broader civic participation and encouraging more effective state governance. Improving voter participation rates should yield election results more reflective of all Californians' interests and priorities, which in turn would enable public officials to better know and serve their constituents, as well as increase their accountability to those they represent.

Participants and time frame:

The California Votes Initiative spans election cycles in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Below is a list of the nine organizations participating in the initiative, with the region of each organization's voter outreach noted in parentheses.

• Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California (Los Angeles County)
• California Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (Los Angeles County)
• Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (Riverside and San Bernardino counties)
• Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) of California (Los Angeles County)
• NALEO Educational Fund (Fresno, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties)
• Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance (Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties)
• Pacific Institute for Community Organization (PICO)
  (San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties)
• Southwest Voter Registration Education Project
  (Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties)
• Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education
  (Los Angeles County)

Selection Criteria:

Participating organizations were selected through a competitive request-for-proposals process in Fall 2005. Organizations were selected for funding based on the following criteria:

• A proven history of working effectively with the communities they aim to mobilize
• An organizational commitment to nonpartisan voter education and mobilization
• Proposals to use proven best practices for nonpartisan voter education and mobilization, or testing promising new approaches

We are not accepting proposals for new participants in the California Votes Initiative.

Achievements:

In 2006, the California Votes Initiative organizations contacted more than 80,000 voters through direct methods such as door-to-door outreach and phone calls, and an additional 100,000 voters were contacted through less-direct methods such as voter forums and messages to congregations. In 2008, the organizations estimate that they will reach nearly 300,000 voters through direct contact methods and many more voters through less-direct means.

Working closely with each organization, an expert evaluation team is facilitating data collection and management, analyzing post-election outcomes, and determining — with input from the outreach organizations — the lessons to be drawn from the initiative's results. In addition, so as to amplify the impact of the direct outreach activities and contribute to policymaker awareness of changing voting patterns, Irvine is publicizing grantees' progress and the overall evaluation results.

In October 2007, the preliminary findings were shared with the field through a report, New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization. This report showed that, while the effectiveness of voter outreach varied across grantees, the more effective campaigns generally raised turnout by about 7 to 9 percentage points among those contacted. The evaluation also highlighted a number of best practices for voter mobilization: To learn more about the evaluation component of this initiative, click here.