They Don't Get a Vote. You Do.
Most turnout messaging talks about elections in the abstract, seats, margins, party numbers. This template does the opposite. It names the actual river, the actual food pantry, the actual after-school program in your town, and says the quiet part plainly: none of them get a say in what happens to them. You do.
What's in the template
Slide one grounds the message in place: a local river, the tree canopy, specific wildlife at a specific local landmark, pollinators, a local bike trail. Nothing abstract, everything something a longtime resident would recognize by name.
Slide two shifts to institutions: real nonprofits, shelters, resource centers, community organizations that depend on public funding and policy decisions to keep serving people.
Slide three narrows to kids specifically: Medicaid, summer lunch programs, SNAP, child care. These are the programs most directly shaped by state budget decisions, and the ones with the least political voice of their own.
Slide four turns the whole thing around: "You do." Then a direct instruction, register, bring your people, and the specific event details.
The format works because of what it withholds. It never states an argument outright, it just lists names, real ones, and lets the accumulation make the point. By the time slide four says "you do," the reader has already supplied the reasoning themselves.
How to customize it
This is the most locally-specific template in the library, and that specificity is the entire point. A generic version of this ("the wildlife doesn't get a vote") loses almost all of its power. Before filling it in:
Name real local nature. Your actual river or creek, a specific park or nature preserve, whatever species or habitat is locally recognizable, a specific trail by name. If you don't know these off the top of your head, a quick look at your city or county parks department page will get you there.
Name real local nonprofits, ideally ones genuinely affected by funding decisions, a shelter, a family resource center, a health clinic, a mission. Naming real organizations does two things: it makes the post concrete, and it can prompt those organizations to notice and share it themselves.
Keep the kids slide grounded in real, current programs. Medicaid, SNAP, school lunch, and child care are common across states, but confirm which of these are genuinely under local or state budget pressure before including them, this only works if it's true. Goshen lost a bunch of funding due to SEA-1. What have Republican supermajorities taken from your community?
Fill in your own event details on the final slide. This is where the emotional build-up turns into an action people can actually take.
Suggested caption
[Your local river] doesn't get a vote. Neither does the food shelf that fed 400 families last month, or the kid whose summer lunch program is on the chopping block.
But you do.
Register to vote. Bring your people. [Your event name], [date], [time], [location].
#BringYourPeopleToThePolls #[YourLocalGroup] #Vote[YourState]
