Can a Friend’s Selfie Save a GOTV Mailer From the Trash Can?

It’s a familiar sight for American voters in the weeks before an election: Mailers plastered with the faces of candidates, lists of policy positions and reminders to vote. 

In most cases, those mailers are cast into trash cans and recycling bins, often without a second thought. But one nonprofit is betting that voters are less likely to ignore those mailers if their friends’ faces are printed on the front.

Vote Rev Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) that designs and tests civic engagement tools and tactics, is piloting a new effort – dubbed P.S. Vote – that encourages users to send their friends and family personalized reminders to vote. Anyone interested could sign up with their name and state of residence, create a list of friends or family members they wanted to send postcards to and upload a selfie that would be printed right on the mailer.

“The idea is that the postcards are starting these conversations, because maybe when someone opens their mailbox, they see all this other mail that looks generic to them. And then they see their friend’s smiling face,” said Michael Kaemingk, the director of program at Vote Rev Action Fund and its sister organization Vote Rev, a Democratic-aligned political action committee. 

The effort is rooted in underlying logic of relational GOTV: that the best messengers for civic engagement are the people that voters already know. Sure, there’s still a chance that the mail still ends up in the trash, Kaemingk acknowledged. But there’s also the possibility that seeing a familiar face will prompt a postcard’s recipient to take a second look, or even reach out to the person who sent it.

The idea for P.S. Vote came together quickly. The team at Vote Rev Action Fund built out the platform in just a couple weeks with some help from AI tools, Kaemingk said. 

And the pilot window was relatively short. Sunday was the final day for participants to create physical postcards, though the website is still open for users to send digital postcards. All told, more than 5,000 mailers are being sent out as part of the pilot, Kaemingk said.

Vote Rev Action Fund has long operated in the relational organizing space. The group tested a tactic similar to P.S. Vote in 2024 that saw on-the-ground canvassers encourage voters to send people in their personal networks vote-reminder postcards.

Mike Cassesso, the executive director of Vote Rev and Vote Rev Action Fund, said that on-the-ground organizing is still “the core” of the group’s identity and work. But the P.S. Vote pilot marks an effort to expand into the online-to-offline relational organizing space, where online actions can evolve into real-world conversations. 

It’s not just about encouraging others to vote, Cassesso said. Sending a personalized vote reminder is a two-way street, where participants become more committed to voting when they talk to their friends and family members about voting. 

“Part of this is the act of committing to turn your friends out and taking a substantive action,” Cassesso said. “That in itself motivates you to be a better voter.”