Field Team 6 (FT6) is one of the most effective organizations working in voter engagement today. Founded in 2019 by Jason Berlin after his work on the California Democratic Party’s 2018 midterm campaign, FT6 exists for one purpose: to register likely Democratic voters year‑round.
Berlin created FT6 after seeing two structural problems that repeat every election cycle. First, campaigns dissolve when the election ends. The people, the skills, the momentum, the institutional memory — all of it disappears. This is considered normal, but it is also wasteful. The work of democracy does not stop in November.
Second, the Democratic Party largely leaves voter registration to others who do not necessarily prioritize our interests. Groups like the League of Women Voters do excellent work, but they are nonpartisan, and other organizations may be aligned with other parties. The result is that the pool of likely Democratic voters does not keep pace with population changes. GOTV programs become more expensive because they are chasing a stagnant pool of registered voters. And as the Pew Research Center found in its 2022 study Why Americans Don’t Vote, the number one reason people are not registered is simple: sixty percent say no one asked them.
In practical terms, the Democratic Party is abandoning votes that could be picked up for the asking. FT6 was created to do exactly that.
Crops must be sown long before the harvest.
Voters must be registered long before the election.
And there is always another election.
What FT6 Does
FT6 has spent years testing outreach methods and analyzing results. Their findings come from millions of real contacts. FT6 runs multimodal outreach: postcards, texts, emails, and some in-person registration drives.
Efficiency
However, this is a data-driven effort. Buying data from commercial sources to sort out the unregistered likely Democrats is not cheap. It is merely more effective that other means of increasing totals at the ballot box.
Learnings
FT6 used to rely on vendor partisan scores. In 2024, their analytics team developed new models that outperformed those vendor tools. Through careful testing, FT6 learned that warm, conversational texting doubles response rates compared to cold scripts. And FT6 has learned that most people they contact are low‑information or no‑information voters: they are not following political news, not getting campaign emails, not being targeted by digital ads ... they are simply living their lives, ready to be asked by means the Democrats are not using in a systematic way.
A Key Insight: GOTV vs. Voter Registration
There is a fundamental asymmetry between GOTV communication and voter‑registration communication.
In a GOTV message, we are asking the recipient to do something for us: take time out of their day, go to a ballot box, and cast a vote. It is a request for effort — a civic request, but still a request.
In a voter‑registration message, we are offering to give something to them: the ability to participate, to have a voice, to be included in decisions that affect their lives. We are not asking for a favor; we are extending an opportunity.
This difference helps explain why voter‑registration outreach can be so effective. It is an invitation, not an ask — and many people respond simply because no one has ever offered before.
A King County Example
King County has an adult population of roughly 1.9 million. If about 13 percent of adults are non‑citizens, that leaves about 1.653 million adult citizens. Applying the county’s claimed registration rate of about 80 percent yields roughly 331,000 adult citizens who could register but have not. If about 58 percent lean Democratic overall in King County, then about 199,000 of these unregistered adults are likely Democratic.
If we imagine asking all 199,000 of these adults to register, and if we apply FT6’s reported ratio that about one in six contacts results in a new likely Democratic vote, then the result is about thirty‑three thousand likely new votes. This is not a prediction; just arithmetic showing what is possible when large numbers of unregistered adults are contacted and asked to register.
Why FT6 Should Present to LD34
Every political organization faces the same challenge: how do we expand the electorate in a way that is measurable, cost‑effective, and likely to produce long‑term impact? FT6 offers:
A clear theory of change
A track record of large‑scale results
A focus on people who are not being reached by anyone else
A method that is likely more cost‑effective than traditional GOTV
Tools that political organizations can use immediately
Training that is friendly, accessible, and fast
A willingness to talk to any group, anytime, via Zoom or sometimes in person
Data is expensive. Buying commercial databases to identify unregistered likely Democratic voters takes money and time. FT6 is grassroots‑funded and could do more work with more resources. But the core insight remains: every likely Democrat who is not registered to vote should be asked to register. FT6 has the tools to help local organizations do exactly that.
If this work matters to LD34, there are two simple ways to help: invite FT6 to speak at an upcoming meeting, and consider contributing a few dollars to support their outreach.
Grassroots organizations run on energy and small donations. FT6 is no exception. And the work they do is likely to have long‑term impact, because registering a voter is not a one‑time action; it changes the electorate itself.
We win the battle by changing the battlefield.
