Ahead of General Election, Get-Out-the-Vote Effort Targets Jewish L.A. Voters

Signs reading “Don’t Kvetch. Vote” and “Your Vote. Your Jewish Future” decorate a midsize retail space on S. Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills.

It’s the recently launched voter center for Los Angeles Unites: Coalition of Jewish Voters, a Jewish voter mobilization effort that, since opening on Sept. 19, has enlisted hundreds of volunteers across Los Angeles to register Jewish voters and educate them about the state and local races on the ballot, ahead of the Nov. 5 general election.

The nonpartisan education advocacy group Teach Coalition, a project of the Orthodox Union (OU), was behind the Beverly Hills-based voter center. The initiative worked in partnership with approximately 40 Jewish organizations, including Jewish Federation Los Angeles, to ensure Jews were involved with and participating in the upcoming election.

“For years, we’ve been engaging Jewish communities across the board, making sure our voices are heard to their maximum potential,” Dan Mitzner, OU director of government affairs, said. “We’re not on the menu anymore, we’re at the table. So that’s what we’re about, increasing voter turnout in a major way.”

On Nov. 2, the final Shabbat before the election, 15 Los Angeles synagogues partnered with Los Angeles Unites on “We Vote Shabbat,” an initiative to raise awareness about the importance of voting. 

Mitzner described the voting center as a “hub of volunteerism,” where volunteers, known as “Super Volunteers,” were enlisted for their social networks. Among other responsibilities, the volunteers conducted outreach to their extensive contacts and ensured they were registered to vote. 

To do so, each volunteer downloaded an app to their phone that allowed them to connect to their contact list, see who has registered to vote and see who has and hasn’t voted. Using this data, volunteers reached out to their contacts and urged them to vote.

This was effective, said Mitzner, who is based in New York, because getting a text message or call from someone you know can be much more impactful than receiving a random, automated message.

The outreach strategy was “relational,” he said. “We’re making it a peer-to-peer movement.”

While Mitzner acknowledged giving a volunteer access to a friend’s voter information can seem “A little Big Brother-ish,” it’s all public information and doesn’t reveal who someone voted for.

While relative to other communities, Jewish civic engagement was strong, there was still work to be done, Mitzner said.

“We can do better,” he said. “We want to be as close to 100% [voter participation] as we possibly can.” 

With increases in antisemitism happening nationwide in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, the organization’s leadership said Jewish voters were unprecedently driven to participate in the latest election and demonstrate the collective power of their voice.

“Antisemitism is on the ballot,” Mitzner said, pointing to local races that will “have a direct impact on the safety of our community.”

The OU’s Teach Coalition describes itself as a nonprofit and nonpartisan movement that advocates for equitable government funding for nonpublic schools, including Jewish day schools and yeshivas. The organization said it “advocates on behalf of approximately 90% of Jewish day school and yeshivah students nationwide.”

In the months leading up to the election, the OU’s Teach Coalition launched similar get-out-the-vote efforts in New York, Florida and Pennsylvania. It experienced success. In a New York congressional primary race, a “Westchester Unites” campaign contributed to Westchester County Executive George Latimer’s surprising defeat of Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who had expressed opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza. In that election, “15,508 Jewish voters turn[ed] out in a race decided by 12,816 voters,” according to the Teach Coalition.

In Beverly Hills, the voter center was focused on education and outreach, including efforts of combating voter apathy, offering voter registration support and absentee ballot assistance while serving as a hub of community engagement. 

What the organization didn’t do was tell people how to vote.

“We are a 501(c)(3). We don’t rate or endorse any candidates,” Mitzner said. “We don’t provide opinions or endorsements of any candidate. We ask people to do their homework and vote their conscience.”

The Beverly Hills location of the voter center was a natural choice, said Rebecca Zisholtz, director of marketing and communications at the Teach Coalition. When determining where to launch a voter center, the organization sought areas with high foot traffic as well as sizable Jewish communities.

“All of our voter centers are very purposely situated in the heart of Jewish communities,” Zisholtz said. “We want to be where the people are.”