WISCO Project Mobilizing Young Voters
Engaging Students in Wisconsin in a Supreme Court Election
The WISCO Project, a Wisconsin student organizing entity, faced a significant problem from the calendar with spring break occurring on most campuses in the weeks just before the election.
In order to tackle this challenge in the lead up to the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court elections, the WISCO Project leveraged relational strategies and the Empower app to run effective student get out the vote programs. To increase engagement they gamified goals for the participants by creating dynamic competitions.
The Wisco Project created several different peer-to-peer events across campuses with various campus organizations competing for who could recruit the most participants to their events. These groups created exciting marketing materials with eye-catching graphics to help sell the events as fun.
They sponsored their own independent event ahead of the election called Boozin’ for Susan (the Democratic Party’s endorsed Supreme Court candidate). At the event attendees downloaded the Empower app and were eligible to earn a drink ticket for every 10 relational text messages sent.
During spring break the Wisco Project also held spring break competitions, having students reach out to remind their friends to vote over the break. This was very successful with students across 13 campuses having more than 3,300 relational conversations during spring break alone.
In total the Wisco Project completed over 12,000 relational conversations over the course of a 6-week period ahead of the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election successfully helping to drive turnout for a decisive win.
