How to Motivate People to Vote

In the past year, there has been a lot of push to get people to vote on anything and everything they can vote on. But the real question here would be, how do we motivate people to vote? We can’t just repeat the need to vote because then people just ignore what is being said do to how often it is said. To give an example of this, it’s like turning on the television well you work on something just to have the background noise. Repeating the same thing over and over again, it becomes background noise. 

So how do we avoid the topic becoming background noise to a person’s everyday life. There are a few ways to prevent that, those would be; having people make a commitment, showing that everyone is doing it and just a tad bit of peer pressure. Nothing to crazy though, everyone has the right to vote but it doesn’t mean they have to. 

The first one being having people make a commitment, the reason being would be that if people pledge to vote, than they are more likely to follow through. A study done by David W. Nickerson and Todd Rogers, showed a 4.1% increase in voters during the 2008 election, when people made a commitment to vote. The second one would be showing that everyone is voting and this adds to the idea of using some peer pressure. This would be because people are more likely to join in something because of how they see everyone else doing it. It like the idea of FOMO, which means fear of missing out. In my personal opinion, if I see a lot of my friends and my family doing something, it is something that I want to try. 

The idea of voting is hit or miss because of how people don’t feel like it’s not important. But all of our votes show that we have a voice and the voice leads to the change that we want to see. 

Work Cited:

Nickerson, D., & Rogers, T. (2010). Do You Have a Voting Plan? Implementation Intentions, Voter Turnout, and Organic Plan Making. Psychological Science, 21(2), 194-199. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/41062187

Written by Ashley Elisara