How to sell the “yes” vote?

By

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – How do you sell the “yes” vote in the upcoming transportation tax referendum? Jeffrey Tumlin, a transportation planner based in San Francisco, addressed a crowd of roughly 200 people at SFU downtown on Tuesday night to talk about transportation, transit and share his positive experience with a similar vote in Alameda County, California.

Tumlin, who once worked for TransLink to develop the Vancouver Regional Cycling Strategy, says giving people a bunch of numbers like the sale tax will cost your family $0.34 per day or $125 per year won’t work; you need to get personal with stories. “It’s not that dissimilar selling a transportation measure as it is selling a toothpaste. You need to appeal not to people’s logical minds but to their emotions.”

He also thinks you need to focus on people who aren’t sure of how they’ll vote and find messages that will win them over. “The ones that have decided “yes” you can ignore. The ones that have decided no and there’s no way to sway them, ignore them, and find the people who are ‘swayable’ and are still undecided and find out what are the messages that resonate with them.

Although in San Francisco it took five years of campaigning before reaching success, even with just a couple of weeks left he says a “yes” is possible.

There are still many people who are on the fence of how they’re going to vote, but transportation talks like the one on Tuesday night are swaying people toward the “yes” side.

“I was conflicted. I wasn’t too sure how the money would be spent and I think the presenter gave his case on how the money is really going to build out economy,” says Jack.

“Although there are a lot of issues that need to be resolved both with maybe the plan, funding and TransLink, we’re in a growing region that still needs this expansion in transit,” adds Mike.

“You know we’re not the perfect transportation system, we are one of the better ones and we got to get the best out of it,” says Luke.

The mail-in ballot for the proposed transit tax will go out starting March 16th and needs to be returned by May 29th.

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today