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By Brian Miller
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Across the country, political campaign staffers are cautiously prepurchasing a hopeful amount of Champagne and a precautionary amount of tissue boxes in anticipation of the November 3 midterm elections.
And while candidates will either toast their supporters or cry into tissues, nonpartisan organizations like ours working for a more representative electorate will be looking to toast something different. Did Americans vote in large numbers? Did we set new voter turnout records? How many eligible voters were left out of the process, uncontacted and ignored?
Unfortunately, many Americans live in communities routinely overlooked by campaigns, civic deserts that are left out of campaign turf wars and political outreach. They may not have a strong history of voting themselves, or live in communities where participation has historically been low. As voter data gets more sophisticated, campaigns increasingly engage in a form of microtargeting, sending ads exclusively to those who are likely to vote (and likely to support their candidate).
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Campaigns that parachuted in sometime in 2026 will soon be packing up down the road from these neighborhoods, taking with them spreadsheets, maps and analyses that may lead them to skip many of the same communities in the local elections of 2027 and the presidential election of 2028. The result is voters and communities without a history of voting, disproportionately lower-income communities, get ignored. Being ignored, they don’t vote and the cycle repeats itself.
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It’s a cycle worth examining before we start drawing conclusions about who showed up on Election Day, and why. It’s also a place where nonprofits doing nonpartisan voter engagement can make a big difference. Today, we celebrate the nonprofits that did step up.
Looking at the numbers from past elections, we can already identify some of the barriers likely to affect participation this year. And while who is and is not contacted is a central driver of voter turnout, that voter contact is also intertwined with other barriers. Organizations reaching out to those without a strong history of voting can help them navigate related issues, structural barriers, securing required ID, overcoming language barriers and more.
Among people with disabilities who did not vote in 2024, 15.6 percent reported that they were unable to vote because they lacked assistance, according to Rutgers. Even among those who cast a ballot, 16.4 percent experienced voting difficulties, nearly twice the rate among voters without disabilities. Rutgers also estimated that 40.2 million Americans with disabilities were eligible to vote in 2024, nearly one in six eligible voters.
For someone who cannot afford to miss a shift, a work conflict can mean missing an election, potentially making them less likely to receive outreach the next time around. Nonprofits can help interrupt that cycle by explaining early voting and mail ballot options available in their state, helping people find a way to vote that works with their schedules. These are enormous communities caught in a cycle of limited outreach and voter education, in part because of the realities of their bank accounts.
And the list of overlooked communities goes on. After the 2024 election, 59 percent of nonvoters ages 18 to 34 said no organization or campaign had contacted them. These are people who may benefit from someone answering a first-time voter’s questions, but who aren’t necessarily priorities for campaigns focused on likely voters.
Campaigns have limited time and resources. Their job is to win elections, and contacting people who have voted consistently is a rational use of those resources. But when past participation becomes a major factor in deciding who receives outreach, missing one election can make someone less likely to hear from a campaign during the next. But circumstance doesn’t tell us much about whether someone cares about the direction of their community or country.
There is already an extensive network of community organizations capable of helping address some of these barriers. Nonprofits work with people throughout the year, often in communities where political campaigns have little sustained presence. Unlike campaign operations, their work doesn’t end when the votes are counted.
That capacity deserves more sustained attention and investment, particularly as we look toward 2027 and 2028. Voter education and assistance cannot depend entirely on the priorities of campaigns that operate for a few months and then disappear.
On November 4, the country will begin dissecting the results. We’ll hear plenty about which candidates won, which messages worked and which voters showed up. The Champagne bottles will be empty, the tissues thrown away and campaign offices will begin closing their doors.
But the communities those campaigns overlooked will still be there. Before we use this year’s turnout figures to decide which voters are worth contacting in the next election, we ought to ask how many eligible Americans were left out of the conversation long before Election Day arrived. And, even more importantly, how can we make sure they are not left out next time.
Brian Miller is executive director of Nonprofit VOTE and co-author of Help Your Community Vote (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2027).
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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