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Years ago, I was doing a training in the state of New Hampshire, and the topic of political door hangers came up in a conversation about grassroots outreach.
The person I was talking to explained that door hangers in the Granite State can be absolutely huge. He gestured the width of his arms and launched into a conversation about what it’s like to have candidates stop by your living room for a casual chat about why they’re running for office.
To this day, I’m not certain the ginormous door hangers are a reality, but I think frequently about what it must be like to have up-close-and-personal access to people on the ballot.
Here in Indiana, we’re lucky if we get one or two highly scripted debates in our top-tier races, most of which haven’t been competitive in almost two decades. If you’ve ever worked on one of these campaigns, you know the negotiations for these events can come down to the size of boxes to stand on, who enters the stage first and how many questions the Libertarian candidate is allowed to field.
Everything is done to ensure nothing goes wrong.
This past primary, we saw more action than ever before in a handful of Statehouse races following an influx of millions in out-of-state spending related to mid-decade redistricting, most of which benefited TV stations and direct mail firms. The ads worked, but they often felt disconnected from reality.
And even with the added outside investment in those races, our turnout numbers barely budged.
Indiana saw just 17% of registered voters cast their ballots in the May 5 election — the exact same percentage as two years ago in a presidential cycle. In May 2022, turnout was 14% statewide. In this most recent election, Marion County only notched 16% turnout despite one hotly contested countywide election and a four-way race for Congress on the Democratic side.
Lots of people have lots of theories on why we can’t get our numbers up. Here’s mine: Voters should demand more from candidates.
In states like New Hampshire and Iowa — states that have long mattered in presidential elections — voters get access and information. They regularly have the kind of engaged dialogue with those seeking office that we only really see here in party conventions, where a couple thousand insiders decide who will be on the ballot in November.
Democrats and Republicans both had contested Secretary of State nominations this year that required the candidates to make their case directly to delegates. Two years ago, evangelical pastor Micah Beckwith spent months working the phones to snag the GOP’s nomination for lieutenant governor, besting now-Gov. Mike Braun’s preferred candidate at the convention.
In those races, candidates or their surrogates will text or call multiple times per day. They’ll send mailers galore. They’ll work the room at the convention, where the number of stickers you see when you walk in the door might give you a better estimate of who’s going to win than any public polling could.
It’s much easier to communicate with a small audience than a large one. And it’s hard to get there in an era where every gaffe can become a TikTok clip, which might necessitate Yondr pouches or Chatham House Rules at close-knit gatherings between candidates and voters. We should still try.
If we want better turnout, better candidates and, ultimately, better government, we need more competitive races where information flows freely and voters are able to more actively engage with our democracy.•
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Chartier is a lifelong Indianapolis resident and owner of Mass Ave Public Relations. Send comments to [email protected].
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