Any national voter education campaign is a huge undertaking requiring lots of time, planning, and resources. Training people to run workshops, setting up the workshops or information sessions and conducting them, and preparing and broadcasting radio and television spots have much more impact if people who attend the meetings and receive information pass this information on to others in their families, streets, and communities. Personal recommendations from reliable individuals result in helping people to become better informed, trust the process, and appreciate the value of their contribution.
Every meeting and interaction between voter educators and citizens should include an element on disseminating the information. When information has been provided and meaningful learning has taken place, participants should be encouraged to spread the information to as many people as they can. Asking the question: "So, what now?", will get participants to come up with formal as well as informal ways of spreading the information in their communities.
In some settings, religious institutions can provide some people with an appropriate platform from which to encourage people to vote and provide them with information on how, where, and when this will be done.
The kitchen table is another site of much discussion and can provide a participant with an opportunity to share the information gathered with friends and have free-flowing discussions in a safe and familiar environment. The market place provides another location where there is a lot of human interaction and where information can be passed along.
Essential to doing this well is providing participants with ways of updating themselves with information about the elections. Sources should be reliable and equipped to deal with queries from citizens. Providing people with many copies of information leaflets or fliers will enable them to give something concrete to those they encounter. Asking each person at the workshop to take a poster popularising the elections back to their community and place it prominently will also spread information on elections. Contact information that they and others are able to use will be useful for updating information they have.
Finding and making use of people who are well connected in the community can be especially valuable (see Interlocutors and Intermediaries).
Apart from the initial cost of the first level of workshops, word-of-mouth transmission of information is cost free. There are, however, concerns about passing on information in this way. Ensuring that the information is accurate is difficult. Telling people where and how to get accurate information enables them to update themselves. Unbiased information is extremely difficult to monitor, thus it is vital that citizens are encouraged to emulate voter educators in their unbiased and nonpartisan behaviour.
Another reason this is difficult is that people, because they have to make a choice, naturally want their friends and neighbours to agree with their choice and in persuading them may give a slanted view of one party or candidate over another. Here too, encouraging citizens to pass on reliable central hotline numbers will enable people to verify the information they received from their family, friends, or even the press.
Ideally, every citizen should take responsibility for passing on to other citizens the message of participating in the democracy by voting in the elections. In a country where every citizen is passing on the message of voting, everyone eventually will hear how they can contribute to building democracy.
It is this multilayered approach of working together, to bring everyone to a point of believing in the power of the individual vote to make a difference, that will make an election free and fair and contribute to a stable democracy.
