This guide features recommendations for rolling out Motivote as part of a nonpartisan employee engagement initiative for the General Election Cycle.

When thinking about your company's voting initiative, you'll be considering a number of factors that will shape your rollout strategy and timing.

For an employee-facing engagement, this will of course be shaped by your broader corporate calendar and other internal communication or engagement priorities. In addition, the reality of election schedules should shape your planning.

In a Federal Election Cycle, Primary Elections will take place from January of the election year all the way through September depending on voters' states. (In Primary Elections, voters select the candidates they want to represent their political party in the General Election come November.)

Given the variation in state primary timing, many companies choose to focus their engagement only on the General Election. This simplifies logistics and ensures that you're not skipping over voters in some states due to their Primary schedules.

That said, there is still a lot of state-by-state variation within the General Election Cycle.

Consider factors like registration deadlines and early voting periods. In some states, registration deadlines hit 30 days out from Election Day; in others, you can register up through Election Day. In some states, early voting opportunities begin during late September; in others, it's available for just a few days in early November or not at all.

Given that variation, it's important to launch your initiative with enough time to activate your employees ahead of key deadlines in their respective states.

Launching early enough also makes your effort more impactful. The closer to Election Day you launch, the more "noise" in the environment.

Launching in late July/early August has its pros and cons.

On one hand, it's early enough in the cycle that most voters won't yet be inundated with emails, texts and other election-related communications. So, your message is going to stand out more than it would otherwise and will demonstrate the company is taking leadership on this area. For many employees who care about corporate social impact, they want to view proactive efforts rather than something that feels like an afterthought.

On the other hand, you're going to see lower initial engagement due to summer vacation schedules and mindsets. Some people may not feel ready to think about the election cycle yet, and put off engaging until later on.

So, if you choose to launch over the summer, plan for subsequent promotion opportunities. We suggest using the summer as a "soft launch" with a small internal group, followed by a broader rollout later on in the fall. You can also encourage leadership to sign up ahead of your broader rollout to make the initiative more visible.

Just after Labor Day is a great time to launch your initiative because it will allow a full month of engagement before the earliest state registration deadlines are upon us. In some states, the voter registration cutoff comes early in October.

After rolling out your effort the first week of September, you can use Civic Holidays like National Voter Registration Day (see below) as hooks for promotional pushes.

If aiming for a more condensed engagement over a shorter time period, National Voter Registration Day is a great "hook" to launch your initiative.

It's a highly visible, national campaign — with thousands of other businesses also promoting and celebrating the day.

National Voter Registration Day is taking place September 17, 2024. The week of NVRD is the latest we recommend launching your initiative.

Why? With some state registration deadlines falling as early as 30 days out from Election Day, launching later than mid-September may reduce the impact of your effort.

If they don't access the resource with at least a few days until their state's registration deadline, voters won't have time to check if they're registered at their current address and get registered if needed.

While about half of the the states do have same-day registration options, meaning voters can get registered on the same day they vote, this is only relevant for people who are planning to vote in-person.

📅 Adapt this content timeline to your corporate calendar and internal comms/engagement needs!