In Tonya Williams' Mississippi family, they all vote. But last year, Williams' uncle casually mentioned that he hadn't voted in an election in years. Shocked, she helped him make a plan.
“We don't miss elections. We will go. If you need a ride, we will pick you up and take you to the polls,” Williams said.
A ruthless progressive group that focuses on relational organizing—individuals using their personal networks to get out the vote—relies on people like Williams to get family members to the polls.
Since the 2022 election, Relentless has championed relational organizing, and this year the group is launching a $10.8 million program that, in part, will help program participants pay a $200 stipend to vote. The program's organizers say they plan to build a network of more than 2 million voters in seven battleground states, including Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“Relational [organizing] is a way for voters to receive correct, accurate information in this time of unprecedented disinformation, because people trust their friends,” Davis Leonard, CEO of Relentless, told WIRED. “And so the best way to get people accurate information that they're going to trust is from a trusted messenger. And that is someone they already know.”
By paying people like Williams, who participated in the Relentless program last year, the group hopes to reach disenfranchised voters by accessing their personal networks. Relentless especially wants to do it this year because of the amount of election disinformation already present online.
“One of the things we're learning is that the extent to which I trust information that comes to me is only increased if I trust the person who gives me that information,” says Hahrie Han, a professor who studies collective action and grassroots movements . at Johns Hopkins. “And the extent to which I am willing to be convinced by someone also depends on the extent to which I trust the messenger.”
In 2022, the number of political texts increased by 158 percent compared to the previous year data collected by the robocall blocking app Robokiller. That year, Americans received 15 billion political text messages. For many, the content of these texts and other communications is suspicious: more than 70 percent of voters say they are concerned about misleading election information, This is evident from a recent poll by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Relational organizing is “basically communicating in a way that cuts through the noise of the blizzard of information and disinformation that voters are confronted with,” Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, said in an interview Tuesday. “And it also helps people think about what their most fundamental values tell them to do, even if that means voting for a candidate for a party they haven't supported in the past.”
Relentless uses its own app, Rally, which allows program participants to record their contacts and interactions with their friends. Participants can post memes, text their friends and organize in-person events about shared interests, as long as the outreach is led by the voter and not a campaign. “I just think everyone needs to know about voting, and this program has helped us get that out there,” Williams said. “We would meet at a location and then go to that community and get a chance to talk to people and see their feelings about voting in Mississippi.”