Powered By People Expands Organizing Efforts Statewide, Announces Record Grassroots Outreach and Voter Registration Numbers
July 16, 2020
El Paso, Texas — Beto O’Rourke announced today that Powered By People will expand its grassroots organizing and outreach efforts statewide—not only working in competitive State House districts but also registering and engaging voters in every single one of the 254 counties of Texas. The newly expanded effort to call and text every Democrat across Texas while leading the largest voter turnout program in the state’s history follows historic organizing work.
“Thanks to the thousands of volunteers who have stepped up, we have the ability to call and text every Democrat across Texas,” said O’Rourke. “That means that in the midst of this pandemic, when our candidates are unable to knock on doors, hold rallies and town hall meetings and are totally dependent on phone-to-phone field work, Texas Democratic candidates will have the benefit of millions of voter contact phone calls made on their behalf.”
Powered By People’s growing ranks of volunteers have made more than 1.2 million total phone calls and sent 4 million texts to voters across Texas in the past 14 days alone. With Texas and its 38 electoral college votes clearly positioned as the biggest battleground state in the nation, energized phone bank volunteers made 316,000 phone calls in one night alone this week.
As the organization reaches out to prospective new voters in rural, suburban and urban Texas with a combination of direct mail registration forms and follow up phone calls, Powered By People has helped register nearly 50,000 likely Democratic voters so far.
This collective work means Democratic candidates running at every level—from the State House to the White House—will be armed with a list of confirmed voters and their phone numbers in every single State House district. They will also be the beneficiaries of tens of thousands of net-new voters to the rolls during the most important election of our lifetimes.
It also means that they won’t have to waste time calling bad numbers because volunteers will have made the millions of calls necessary to cull the list of extraneous numbers (including wrong numbers and Trump voters) and return a verified, usable list of Texas Democrats that can be turned out during early voting and on election day. That will go a long way in helping Democratic candidates win key State House races and a new Democratic majority ahead of redistricting.
Additionally, this expanded effort ensures that when the Biden campaign turns their focus to Texas, they can plug into a statewide voter contact database to efficiently and effectively pursue turnout. This will dramatically improve our chances of winning Texas for the Democratic nominee for President for the first time since 1976.