A grassroots effort led by Germantown women is reaching 3,000 registered voters who haven’t cast ballots in recent elections. Through colorful postcards and community outreach, Let’s Vote Germantown hopes to re-engage neighbors and inspire them to vote on November 5.
The spirit of mutual aid has met election season. Together, they birthed a personalized postcard that about 3,000 Germantowners can expect to receive ahead of November 5, election day.
This is the initiative of Let’s Vote Germantown (LVG), a nonpartisan community group encouraging neighbors to participate in the upcoming election. The group was started by resident and community advocate Brenda Littlejohn but has morphed into a group effort alongside other mighty Germantown women.
These postcards are part of a campaign aiming to target registered voters in the 19138 and 19144 zip codes who have not voted in the past few elections. Alongside the postcards, the group shares practical information via social media and occasional in-person gatherings where people can learn more about voting.
These postcards hold the message “Let’s Vote” on the front via a colorful drawing of multiracial friends and neighbors embracing each other by local artist Gina Giles.
And on the flip side, there’s a checklist of things and dates to remember ahead of Election Day. There are also phone numbers and links to voter services like the Pa. Voter Hotline and the Philadelphia County Board of Elections. And lastly, there’s a QR code that people can scan with their phones to check their registration status.
But how did this new campaign come about? And where did Littlejohn get the idea? Well, according to her, all it took was a little bit of community — and twenty dollars.
How we got here
It started with a shocking turn of events this summer when President Joe Biden revealed he would not be running for another term, and Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in to do so instead. One of the most popular early moments of this new revelation was a mobilization call on Zoom for over 40,000 Black Women in support of Harris.
While Littlejohn hoped to be one of many on the call, technical issues foiled her plans. However, thinking about what tools and resources she already had, she stepped into the saying, “If one door closes, we find another way in.” And that she did.
It started with a gathering on her porch, where she invited some folks she knew to brainstorm ways of encouraging civic engagement.
“We really got school on basic civics,” Littlejohn shared, saying that one of the folks in attendance was State Representative Darisha Parker. “She talked about what she goes through as an elected official and then shared some of how we can show up in different ways.”
From there, she realized she wanted to do more voter registration outreach. And while the thoughts of how they would engage the community were growing, so was the participation within the group.
Many of the women within this group were also stewards and operators of the former Germantown Mutual Aid fund, launched during the COVID-19 pandemic by Germantown Residents for Economic Alternatives Together (GREAT) to help mitigate the financial burdens of Germantown neighbors often exacerbated by the pandemic.
Littlejohn credits that group with much of the spirit that shines through in this campaign. She says it’s meeting people where they are and “neighbors taking care of neighbors” the best ways they know how. And, right now, taking care of each other means informing each other.
Soon, Tiffany Dominique joined the group. As a person who has been doing voter outreach work for 28 years, Dominique keeps a steady eye on voting trends.
Littlejohn had learned about the disparities between people registered to vote versus those who actually vote from her pastor. However, conversations with Dominique helped clear the focus of the current campaign into what it is.
Dominique named that too many candidates on a ballot to information overload as reasons some people are swayed away from voting, at times. But there are other reasons.
“If you go to PennDOT now and get a new ID or driver’s license, they automatically register you to vote,” Dominique shared, making the point that some people don’t opt out because they simply don’t know they’ve opted in. “So that also leads to low voter turnout.”
The process that Dominique describes is a part of an implementation by Governor Josh Shapiro in 2023 to streamline the voter registration process, where people who qualify to vote are automatically registered. Before this new process, people were offered the chance to register when getting a license, but they had to choose to do so.
Another group of people within this category of non-active registered voters could also be formerly incarcerated people. “Some of them just don’t know they have rights and can vote,” said Jill Saull.
Littlejohn said all of these findings ultimately finalized the idea of a postcard.
But where does the aforementioned $20 come into the fold? Well, she needed it to know who the group would send postcards to, of course. That $20 was the fee needed to get a voter list from the Board of Elections website.
And though most folks who could obtain this list may have some “intimidation,” Littlejohn said because of a specific software needed to use it, it just so happened that she was already familiar with it, much to her delight.
Dominique sang praises for the initiative and dedication Littlejohn and the group had shown in getting this done.
She says, “I can tell you that I’ve been doing this kind of work since 1996, and I had never seen a group of women decide, ‘This is important to me, and I want to do it.’ I saw community members that cared and really believed in a beloved community.”
Why the nonpartisan route?
In a neighborhood like Germantown, in the blue city of Philadelphia, some may assume most campaigns are geared toward Democrats. And they might be right, or they may be wrong, but LVG made the intentional choice to ensure people didn’t have to choose a side to be informed.
Of course, the original conceptualization of what this group has sprouted into came from a Kamala Harris supporter wanting to mobilize people for her presidency. However, Littlejohn reminds the Germantown Info hub that an idea doesn’t warrant the final say and that group decisions are necessary in this work.
She recalls a conversation with other supporters about the work LVG was looking to do, where they advised going partisan because “[they] could get additional funds.”
“I put it out to the group,” Littlejohn recalled. “And they were like, no, we’re staying nonpartisan.”
And though the consensus was the same, different members had different reasoning. For example, Littlejohn says it was easy for her to fall in line with the majority because there were already a lot of campaigns supporting Harris.
On the other hand, Saull feels that getting people to vote shouldn’t be a tense confrontation, which conversations about elections can sometimes be.
She said, “I don’t want to get into an argument with anybody. I also feel like the actual act of voting is what the important thing is.”
Dominique has another view, talking about the social glamor that elections can sometimes bestow on politicians.
“It’s very easy to be able to say, ‘I want you to vote for this person and why.’ It’s much harder to talk about voting when candidates have really big personalities,” she said, suggesting that this makes things “tricky.”
Like Saull, Dominique says it’s the act of voting that’s important. But she also believes all the things that come after voting hold as much weight — like holding elected officials accountable.
“We’re actually the bosses of the president, of the mayor, [and] of the city councilperson,” she shares. “If you don’t like what they do, you fire them. You do performance reviews by going to their office and calling them and saying, ‘Hey, this is what you said you were gonna do, and I need you to do it.”
“I think those are the kind of things that are important to have conversations with and to know that I don’t have skin in the game for one candidate over the other.”
Moving forward
With the Election only 11 days away, what will LVG become after the season passes?
“I want to continue this for other elections,” Littlejohn said, discussing the need to continue positively impacting voter turnout beyond just presidential elections. “It’s a need.”
Saull follows up on those sentiments: “I think people need to understand a little bit more about how the voting process works. It’s not just about the president. There’s also the Congress and the Senate.”
Speaking to more localized implications and outcomes, she said, “I feel like people don’t participate in local elections hardly at all. And I think that’s where the immediate, day-to-day, super important things are.”
Following her earlier sentiments, Dominique says that while there are no trainings or gatherings currently via LVG to help teach those methods of accountability she mentioned, she would love to see them in the future.
Overall, LVG’s future looks bright with the women within it having a commitment to the work and each other. “We are more powerful than we think when we come together,” Littlejohn says.
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