Your voting history could be in a neighbor's mailbox

Hundreds of thousands of Virginians will discover this week, perhaps to their surprise, that someone is tracking their voting records.

The Know Campaign, a new nonprofit group, is sending out an individualized mass mailing to people in 350,000 households recapping their recent voting history and that of their neighbors, listed by name and address. It doesn't reveal how people voted - merely whether they participated.

The objective, according to Debra Girvin, the group's executive director, is to boost turnout in Tuesday's gubernatorial election.

The group is prepared for some negative feedback.

The mailing is going to a random statewide sample of registered voters, Girvin said Tuesday.

"Below is a partial list of your recent voting history - public information obtained from the Virginia State Board of Elections," the letter says.

"We have sent you this information as a public service because we believe that democracy only works when you vote.

"There is another election in Virginia on November 3rd. We will be mailing an updated list to you once those results are in. It is our hope that our updated list will show that you exercised your right to vote."

The mailing also will include the voting history of the recipients' neighbors, Girvin said.

"The research shows that this tactic can drive people to the polls," she said. "We figured, let's give it a try.

"It's been called a shame tactic. But I don't think of it that way. I think of it as a peer pressure tactic."

Girvin said a group in Michigan conducted a similar campaign during a primary race in 2006, and follow-up research showed that it boosted turnout by about 2 percent. She hopes the Virginia effort will do better than that.

Girvin noted that the nationwide turnout in last year's presidential election, the highest in a century, was 64 percent, so more than one-third of registered voters still stayed home. "I personally believe people care more than that," she said.

The Know Campaign is nonpartisan, Girvin said: "We're Democrats, we're Republicans, we're independents. We're a blend. There's a lot of yelling on the left and the right, but there's a whole bunch of us in the middle."

The trick, she said, is getting those people to the polls.

Girvin is a Richmond-based human resources consultant. She declined to identify any of the group's other principals. The mailing is being funded with a $150,000 grant from a foundation that she declined to name.

The group is using the Internet domain name that was used by the kNOw Campaign, which helped defeat a 2002 ballot question on a sales tax for road improvements in Hampton Roads, but has no other connection to that group, Girvin said.

The group's Web site, knowcampaign.org, could not be accessed Tuesday.

Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University, said he doubts the effort will have much impact on voter turnout.

"We used to have a religion of civic duty," Gans said. "That's pretty much gone by the wayside. Now people only vote in those elections where they think it matters.

"I don't know how many people think it matters in this election. But I think a mailing such as this, which is a nice idea, will only affect things on the margins."

The voter data being disseminated by the group could turn up some surprises, Girvin said. One woman in Michigan, for example, learned that her husband, who claimed to be a regular voter, hadn't been to the polls in years.

Girvin said the group knows it will raise some hackles. The Michigan mailing, which went to 80,000 households, generated 1,000 letters of complaint.

"I'm thinking of dyeing my hair a different color and getting some dark glasses," she said.

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com