How do you bring the personal appeal of in-person canvassing online? How can volunteers be more persuasive with a good script? Use FaceTime with an onscreen teleprompter.
Activists are mobilizing supporters for H.R. 1, For The People Act, by canvassing over FaceTime with the free BigStage Teleprompter app. Activists read from a scrolling script on their phone while keeping eye contact with supporters, who are unaware of the teleprompter.
Organizers are responding to the Republican measures that make it harder for the Black community to vote. A recent bill passed by the Republican-led legislature in Georgia "requires voters to submit ID information with both an absentee ballot request and the ballot itself. It limits the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, allows for unlimited challenges to a voter’s qualifications, cuts the runoff election period from nine to four weeks, and significantly shortens the amount of time voters have to request an absentee ballot." - The Guardian.
FaceTime teleprompter
Canvassing for H.R. 1 teleprompter script
Chloe Bollinger, a Students For Justice intern shows how to use the free BigStage Teleprompter app. She wrote this script and uploaded into the app on her iPhone. You can also try her script on a laptop or iPad with this link.
"Republicans have backed voting measures and are pressing forward with bills across the country that would only increase the amount of voter suppression in communities. Stacey Abrams, who has shown how impactful grassroots organizing can be, calls these GOP-backed efforts to keep people from voting “Jim Crow in a Suit”. Our communities need to band together and find ways to keep this from happening.
One of the biggest things you can do is to call your senators and tell them that you support the For The People Act. The bill passed in the House on March 3 strictly on party lines, without a single Republican vote. The For The People Act now needs to be passed in the Senate. This groundbreaking piece of legislation could end partisan gerrymandering, and greatly increase voting access. It needs to be passed in order to keep the dozens of Republican voter suppression bills being pushed in 43 states from being passed. Another thing that we can do to help this effort is phone bank and spread the word to communities across the country about the For the People Act, so that they can call their senators and voice their support as well."
BigStage Teleprompter
The BigStage Teleprompter is an app from DemLabs LLC that can be used in a web browser or as an app on your phone. The free version of the app handles scripts up to 300 words, while the premium version supports longer scripts and has several other advanced features.
Download the free app from the Apple iStore or Google Play.
Students For Justice
Students for Justice (SFJ) is a paid internship program that was developed in 2020 to engage college students in the struggle to fight systemic voter suppression in the United States and to get out the vote. While it was created in response to the twin challenges of a pandemic and a national election, SFJ has developed a model that continues to be powerfully relevant. SFJ brings young people, many of them first-generation college students, together from all around the country in a virtual program, offering them a meaningful, educational, paid work experience.