Helping Climate Voters Elect Climate Champions
Join the Election Engagement Action Team
CCL's Election Engagement throughout 2024 is working to make climate a key issue for every candidate in every election and help more climate voters to vote! Click the action team link to find out about all upcoming opportunities and how to plug into the CCL efforts.
Partnering with the Environmental Voter Project
The Environmental Voter Project (EVP) is focused on increasing turnout of the eight million unlikely-to-vote environmentalists. You can help by phone-banking or sending postcards from anywhere in the U.S. to EVP's 19 key states. EVP selected its key states based on the number of non-voting environmentalists who could be reached and the percentage of the vote they might represent. “These are the states where there are disproportionately large populations of these non-voting environmentalists. This is where we know we can have the greatest impact.
”Chapters can make Election Engagement a group activity or encourage people to do it on their own. Some chapters have met on Zoom before and after phone banking to share the experience and build camaraderie. Learn more tips and tricks by clicking on the "Watch" tab above to see the recording of the live training video.
To get started, organize a group of volunteers who are interested in election engagement to signup for one or more of the phone bank events listed in the CCL Election Engagement Action Team’s events calendar. We need both trained volunteer phone bank leaders who will staff these phone bank sessions, and phone bankers to make the calls. Also, keep checking the calendar for upcoming postcarding activities.
If your chapter would like to phone bank or send postcards as a group, ask everyone to go to environmentalvoter.org/events to see the many open training webinars and frequent days of action (which include training) and then as a group decide which one is most convenient for everyone. Then everyone can sign up individually. When you register, please be sure to select CCL in the pull down menu "How did you hear about this opportunity" so that CCL can tally the number of people doing good work with EVP.
Note: Campaign season is March through September and EVP’s target states for 2023 are: Arizona, Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. You also have the option of working with EVP on special, state and local elections.
Hundreds of Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers have worked with EVP during previous election cycles, canvassing door-to-door, making phone calls and sending postcards to potential voters. EVP does not tell people which candidates or parties to support. Jeff Joslin, a CCL leader in the North Atlanta chapter who volunteered with EVP, said, “We’d ask if they signed up for early voting and provide information on how to vote early. If they brought up a candidate or party they didn’t like, we kind of side-stepped that.”
It’s important for environmental voters of both parties to be consistent voters because it creates an environment where every Republican and every Democratic candidate has to have a strong position on climate change to be viable.
With election season gearing up, many Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteers are looking for ways to strengthen our democracy and increase voter participation. CCL is again encouraging people to check out EVP. You can sign up to receive updates and volunteer opportunities on their website.
Work locally or work your own circles
See the ideas below for more election engagement activities and see CCL's Campaign Season Activities for candidate-related activities:
- Use your democracy: Make sure you vote and that you understand what you need to do in order to vote.
- Help others participate: Work locally to help the people around you vote, either personally one-on-one with people you know or by working with a local organization that helps people register and vote. The League of Women Voters is one well respected organization that you might partner with.
- Ensure that all of your friends and family members are registered to vote at their current address. Everyone can register and request a ballot by mail (where available) at turbovote.org.
- Help students vote. CCL’s campus leaders and campus groups are working with Rock the Vote this fall to encourage students to vote. Rock the Vote is a U.S.-based nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose stated mission is "to engage and build the political power of young people" and for more information, check out rockthevote.org.
- Take off your CCL hat and help campaign personally for candidates of any party that align with your values.
- Help highlight the importance of voting for the climate with this Environmental Voter Handout and/or CCL's Climate Voter yard signs!
- Open dialogue with people you disagree with. Join our Braver Angels Action Team and/or the Braver Angels organization.
- Consider supporting other organizations that take a bi-partisan approach to keeping democratic systems strong in our country. Here are two examples: Issue One and Unite America.
As we often say at CCL, democracy is the solution to climate change, and there are many ways to wield that essential tool.
Video 1: Extended Q&A w/ Nathaniel Stinnett (July 21, 2022)
(59:41)
(34:53)
- Nathaniel Stinnett
- Shannon Seigal
- Jeff Joslin
- Whitney Larsen
- Carol Kravetz & Dublin Galyean
- Video 1: Download the video.
- Video 2: Download the video.
- Video 2: Download PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation.
Audio 1: Extended Q&A w/ Nathaniel Stinnett (July 21, 2022)
(59:41)
(34:53)
- Nathaniel Stinnett
- Shannon Seigal
- Jeff Joslin
- Whitney Larsen
- Carol Kravetz & Dublin Galyean
- Audio 1: Download the podcast
- Audio 2: Download the podcast