Lift Every Vote was founded in 2016 by Joyce Hackett, an author, creative writing professor, activist, and organizer of large-scale public education efforts. We design and execute projects that structurally expand our electorate by helping more people become eligible and registered to vote.

Automatic Voter Registration

Starting in Massachusetts and then extending to other states, we organized activists in all 138 state house districts, and taught them how to educate their elected officials about the registration gains Automatic Voter Registration produces.  In our first effort, 27 Massachusetts volunteers spent a day hiking up and down the bleachers of the MA Democratic Convention, distributing 2,000 educational flyers to delegates and educating them on AVR.  Joyce went on to serve as statewide organizer for Massachusetts’ Automatic Voter Registration coalition, led by Common Cause. In each of MA’s 138 State House districts, she recruited significant campaign donors, and multiple sets of activists, to visit and teach their Representatives about the benefits of how AVR works.  Joyce also negotiated the endorsement of Secretary of State William Galvin.  The MA law passed in 2018 by a vote of 138-0.

Felony Rights Restoration

In 2018, Joyce and Jeanne Heifetz joined forces to work on the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition’s campaign to pass Amendment 4, which restored voting rights to 1.5M citizens with felony convictions. We identified 41,000 Floridians who had signed the petition in support of putting A4 on the ballot, but were subsequently rejected on signature issues. We located them, advised them how to avoid another signature rejection, and sent informational postcards customized to each of Florida’s 67 counties, advising them how to avoid another signature rejection. The project restored voting rights to 1.5M people with felony convictions, which then created a ripple effect of awareness and change in both Democratic and Republican-led states.

Native Citizen Voter Education

After a law change late in the election cycle required every North Dakota Native citizen to produce ID with a street address to vote, Jeanne organized sending 12,000 cards to every ND Native citizen.

Helping to End Cross Check

In Kansas, our members were among the activists who used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain purge lists for Kris Kobach’s flawed deduplication system, CrossCheck, alerting journalists that the security protocols of the Kansas-managed database were so flawed that they could be easily hacked. We obtained the purged voter lists and texted every purged voter to alert them to their status. The efforts led to the suspension and eventual dismantling of CrossCheck.

Our 2020 Postcarding Efforts: 1.3 Million Registration Education Postcards to Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania

In Florida, over 5,000 activists worked on our projects.  In Florida, in collaboration with the FL League of Women Voters, we sent 175,000 information cards to over 175,000 formally incarcerated, newly-eligible Florida citizens. In Georgia, we designed, funded and sent close to 880,000 postcards to young voters of color in collaboration with the New Georgia Project and the NAACP of Atlanta.

Our Postcards

We design, fund, and send postcards with arresting images that connect to local issues, and are signed with handwritten notes.  Their versos convey complex state- or even county-specific voting information in clear, accessible language.