Civic Participation and Voter Engagement Program

The ballot box is our most fundamental means for exercising power.  Increasing civic participation and voter engagement are critical components toward reducing barriers for poor and disenfranchised communities. SCOPE's voter engagement program reverses the trend of declining voter participation in low income communities.  Our community members and leaders organize their neighbors and friends, participate in the development of policy campaigns, attend public meetings and events, testify at hearings, and serve on our Board. Increased participation by our communities in elections ensures that government institutions and decision makers represent and understand the needs and concerns of all of their constituents.

SCOPE has developed systematic models of leadership development and organizing to shape a powerful community voice in public policy decisions. In the course of numerous issue and electoral mobilizations we have:

• Contacted, educated, and tracked the voter participation of over 340,000 voters in our neighborhoods.
• Built a state-of-the-art voter tracking database system which has documented a 20% increase in the voter participation of occasional and newly registered voters, and has captured over 18,000 contacts.
• Developed a core of over 600 grassroots leaders and members that have participated in neighborhood education and recruitment, strategy discussions, political education, and policy campaigns.
• Begun building a network of Neighborhood Education Teams (NETs) of 2-4 activists responsible for mobilizing their neighbors in a 3-5 block radius.