From the 2026 Text Out the Vote guide

The plans, checkpoints, and scripts below come straight from the guide. Download the full PDF for the sample calendar, copy-paste compliance language, and all five script trees.

Why should campaigns text out the vote?

Texting reaches people fast. You can send thousands of personalized messages quickly with P2P Texting or Broadcast Texting. Automating manual tasks frees up staff and volunteers to talk directly with supporters, one to one.

Two-way texting starts real conversations about what actually matters to people, and that is what they remember. It also drives action. Campaigns use it to fill events, recruit volunteers, get folks registered, chase ballots, and get people to the polls.

What are the five phases of a campaign texting program?

Every campaign is different, but strong texting programs move through the same five phases.

1. Build your team. Grow your volunteer base, plan house parties and fundraising events, and test your message early.
2. Get the word out. Chase pledges, send persuasion texts to swing voters, and ID low-propensity voters.
3. Set your universes. Expand your persuasion and ID universe, re-solicit donors, and ramp up volunteer recruitment for the fall.
4. Engage your people. Recruit your GOTV volunteer team, finish the second pass of your persuasion universe, begin ballot chasing, and start early vote GOTV.
5. Text out the vote. Run ballot chases, make multiple passes of your GOTV universe, confirm Election Day volunteers, then turn everyone out.

What should be done by each checkpoint before November 3, 2026?

Registration deadlines and early vote windows vary by state. Map yours onto these checkpoints and use each one to keep your program on pace.

How many volunteers does a P2P texting program need?

For P2P Texting and Dialer, plan two-hour shifts with agents sending roughly 2,000 messages or making 50 calls per hour, and plan at least two to three passes per use case. Then work out your capacity in three steps.

1. Universe size × number of passes ÷ 2,000 = volunteer hours
2. Volunteer hours ÷ 2 = shifts needed
3. Shifts ÷ days in the window (for example, 9 days of early voting) = shifts per day

Using Broadcast Texting? You only need people to respond.

How do campaigns register for 10DLC texting?

10DLC is the messaging standard US carriers use for organizations texting from 10-digit long-code numbers. Registration tells carriers who is texting and what they’re sending, and unregistered traffic gets filtered. Complete these steps before your first send. Our texting compliance page covers the rules in more depth.

1. Step 0: Obtain a Campaign Verify token. Political campaigns, parties, and PACs need a Campaign Verify (CV) token for the current political cycle, which you use during Brand registration with Hustle. Apply at campaignverify.org. If you are not a political campaign, party, or PAC, you can skip this step.
2. Step 1: Update your Privacy Policy. It has to be compliant, and the guide includes sample language.
3. Step 2: Update your SMS Terms and Conditions. The guide includes sample language for these too.
4. Step 3: Update all opt-in forms. Any form on your website that collects cell phone numbers must include the compliant disclosures.
5. Step 4: Reach out to support. Email [email protected] and our support team will walk you through every step of registration.

How should texting fit with email, calls, and mail?

Plan your text program to run alongside your emails, calls, and social posts so every channel reinforces the same message. Texting is fast and allows personalized replies, so use it for same-day event reminders, rapid response, make-a-plan voting conversations, and GOTV reminders. Save long-form persuasion for email and your deepest persuasion conversations for calls.

Keep your calls to action and voice consistent across every channel. If someone receives emails and texts from you, they should sound like they come from the same person. Texts should not be exact copies of your email copy or cadence, so rewrite the message for text instead of pasting in a whole email.

Keep one outreach calendar across all channels, including direct mail, to track and cap total touches per supporter per week. Send the same message over text the week your mail drops, and schedule texts alongside email so email sets the context and text reiterates the ask.

How do you automate GOTV texts?

Build one automation per GOTV tier and let it run. A contact enters when they join a GOTV audience, gets reminders at 60, 30, 7, and 1 day out, sees their own polling place merged into every text, and drops out of the workflow the moment they vote. Let Automations send the reminders while staff and volunteers handle the replies in a staffed inbox during GOTV week.

Keywords turn replies into action. A keyword is a word supporters text you, and an automation is what happens in Hustle in response. It can trigger a reply, a tag, an audience, or all three. These are the keyword setups from the guide.

• VOLUNTEER tags the contact Volunteer Yes, adds them to your volunteer audience, and starts a welcome text series with your upcoming shift dates.
• MAIL sends the steps to vote by mail with your state’s deadlines and applies the tag VBM Request so you can follow up with a ballot chase.
• VOTE replies with an Election Day FAQ, such as a polling place lookup link, voting hours, and what ID to bring.
• ESPAÑOL tags the contact and adds them to that language’s audience, so future messages arrive in the right language.
• DONATE replies with your donation link and tags the contact for future fundraising segmentation.

Broadcast Texting sends to your whole universe at once, and every reply lands in a shared inbox where agents handle them one to one. You can set hours of operation once and let one broadcast cover a national list by time zone, schedule the whole program in advance, track every link to follow up with people who didn’t click, and use custom fields to segment sends and merge details like polling place, district, and early voting site into every script.

What makes a good campaign text script?

Keeping messages short and conversational holds attention and avoids text fatigue. Nobody wants a text that reads like an email.

Write every script in the script editor so agents only tap to send. Save a script once and apply it to any future goal, and script each branch (yes, no, undecided) so volunteers always have the next message ready. Space out your asks, too. Follow up completed actions with a simple thank-you for their time, support, or money.

Sample initial texts

Customize the placeholders with your own details, like polling places and volunteer opportunities, and use your campaign’s voice.

Don’t forget the voter protection line. Add it to every Election Day script, such as “If you notice anything keeping your neighbors from voting, text me or call <voter protection hotline>.”

Which tags should a campaign set up before texting?

Tags turn conversations into data. Build your tag list before your first goal, and decide per tag whether to sync it to VAN by asking whether it is short-term (like event attendance), whether it will be useful through Election Day and beyond, and whether it is likely to change (like VBM ballot request status).

To sync a tag to VAN, go to admin.hustle.com, then Settings, then Tags. Click Edit on a tag, pick the Activist Code, Survey Question, or Canvass Result to map it to, and save. From then on, applying the tag updates the contact’s VAN record automatically. Hustle also syncs with PDI and EveryAction, delivers data to Amazon S3, and offers a public API. Action Network sync is coming in October, with opt-outs and inbound and outbound message events syncing back to Action Network. See Hustle integrations for details.

Text Out the Vote FAQ

When should a campaign start its texting program?

By Labor Day, a campaign should have 10DLC registered, universes cut, a texting calendar set, and volunteer recruitment underway, so the program is ready for National Voter Registration Day on September 22.

How long should a political text message be?

Keep campaign texts under about 300 characters. Short messages get delivered and read, and paragraph-length texts that read like email lose attention.

Do campaigns need a Campaign Verify token to text voters?

Political campaigns, parties, and PACs need a Campaign Verify token for the current political cycle, which is used during 10DLC Brand registration. Organizations that are not a campaign, party, or PAC can skip this step.

Can a campaign text voters without a large volunteer team?

Yes. Broadcast Texting sends a message to a whole universe at once, so you only need people to respond to replies. P2P Texting needs agents to send, at roughly 2,000 messages per hour in two-hour shifts.

Does Hustle sync with VAN?

Yes. Campaigns can import MyList directly with VAN IDs syncing back automatically, map Hustle tags to activist codes, survey questions, and canvass results, and sync goals to VAN events before invites go out.