Drag Out the Vote 1 Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Jan 1 2020

Location: 

across North America

Drag Out The Vote™ is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works with drag performers to promote participation in democracy. We educate and register voters at drag events online and offline, by organizing local and national voter activations. Led by fierce drag kings and queens across the nation, we advocate for increased voter access and engagement in 2020 and beyond.

Conceived in 2017, Drag Out The Vote™ was born out of one woman’s determination to get the LGBTQ+ and Allied communities engaged about voting. In realizing that 1 in 5 LGBTQ+ people is not registered to vote, and that 100 million people overall did not vote in 2016, Jackie Huba set out to find a solution.

Inspired by her friend Phi Phi O’Hara’s Puerto Rico benefit (a massive drag production held in 2017 to raise funds for Hurricane Maria disaster relief), Huba decided to use the power of drag to motivate voters at events across the country. With a strong history of activism, the art of drag carries a long and storied history of impact on social justice movements across the United States.

Formally established in 2019, Drag Out The Vote™ has quickly positioned itself to use drag to engage voters of all struts of life to sashay their way to the polls. The website helps visitors register to vote. Drag Out the Vote has also partnered with Ru Paul's Drag Race, as each episode closes with a dance off urging viewers to participate in the 2020 election.

External sources: 

https://www.dragoutthevote2020.org/
Posted by Maddiewhite on May 13 2020

Staff rating: 

0

Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Activates (people)Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Amplifies (issue or campaign)Brings public and political attention to an issue or campaign.  Can include prefigurative action, making the invisible visible.
Strengthens (community)Strengthens, builds and celebrates community through ritual and/or symbol.
Provides (a useful service)Provides a useful social service.
Shifts (culture)Shifts the cultural landscape in order to imagine and enable change.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear short-term goal. Short-term goals tend to be things like: create or repeal a law; get a President impeached; make the city administration repair a sidewalk. A campaign with a short-term goal needs a clear theory of change, complete with targets that can be cajoled or pressured into effecting the goal.