This run is about the mechanics of getting people to vote, not about who they should vote for. It contains no party, no candidate and no position — because the operational problem is identical whoever is running it, and it is genuinely interesting.
You are coordinating a non-partisan registration and turnout drive on a university campus. You have a small budget, eleven weeks, and volunteers whose enthusiasm is not evenly distributed across those weeks.
No trivia and no right answers — a narrative run about the logistics behind getting people to the polls.
Four archetypes, four starting hands. Your pick sets the stats you begin with — not the ones you end with.
Seven decisions, each one nudging skill, wealth, reputation, and wellbeing. No take-backs.
Your choices resolve into one of six outcomes — and an honest read on what that pattern costs.
Each archetype begins with a different balance of strengths. Your pick sets the stats you start with — not the ones you end with.
Below is the whole run — every chapter, every option, and where each one leads. Press Play this run above to take it as a game instead, with stats that move as you choose and an ending scored from how you played.
Eleven weeks. A budget that covers either printing or a small paid ad run, not both. Nine volunteers, of whom perhaps four will still be active in week eight.
The registration deadline is week seven. Everything before it is a different job from everything after.
The budget is small enough that it can fund exactly one thing properly or three things badly.
The options are printed material, a paid social run, or a stock of prepaid envelopes for postal-vote applications.
Nine people, wildly varying availability, and a rota you built in a spreadsheet that assumes everyone does two shifts a week.
By week three, three of them have gone quiet and one is doing four shifts and starting to sound tired.
Registration deadline in eight days. Your sign-up numbers are respectable and there is a stack of completed forms sitting in a folder waiting to be submitted.
An unsubmitted form is not a registration.
The room booked for your main pre-election event is cancelled with nine days' notice — a double-booking, no malice, no alternative offered.
Eighty people have said they are coming.
Everything now is about the difference between intending to vote and actually voting. That gap is where turnout campaigns are won and lost, and it is almost entirely practical: when, where, and what to bring.
You have volunteer hours for exactly one push.
It is over. You have sign-up counts, event attendance and a rough sense of who followed through — and a decision about which of those you present as the result.
Next year's coordinator will inherit whatever you write down.
No ending is the “best” one — only the one your decisions earned.
You treated it as logistics, and it worked.
Planned backwards from the deadline, spent the budget on removing friction rather than raising awareness, submitted and verified rather than batching, and finished with specific times and places. Nothing about the campaign was inspiring. The follow-through rate was the highest anyone had recorded there.
You built something that outlasted you.
You capped the volunteer who was burning out, recruited from warm contacts, walked with people who wanted company, and handed over the list and the working rota. The turnout number was good. The thing that mattered is that next year does not start from zero.
You reported the number that was true.
Confirmed registrations rather than sign-ups, follow-through rather than attendance, and a written account of what failed. It is a smaller headline and the only one that improves anything — because a campaign optimised against a flattering metric optimises for folders of unsubmitted forms.
One thing, funded properly.
Prepaid envelopes instead of three hedged half-measures, the cancelled event converted into direct contact rather than an expensive replacement room. You worked out that the barrier was friction rather than information, and then you spent every pound on the barrier.
Enormous activity. Uncertain result.
A launch event as the centrepiece, budget split three ways, doors knocked before the deadline mattered, forms batched to the last day and a general 'go vote' push at the end. Everyone worked hard and the campaign is remembered fondly. Nobody can say what it changed.
Modest, measured, and repeatable.
Deadline-first planning, one thing funded properly, a rota built around who actually turns up, forms verified rather than batched, specific plans in the final week, and an honest handover. Not a story anyone tells at a conference. Exactly what a coordinator hopes to inherit.
This is a fictional campus effort. It does not describe an election, university, candidate, party, campaign or voter file. The game does not identify who is eligible, registered, likely to vote or permitted to receive a particular message. Its results cannot measure a real turnout programme or justify contacting voters.
The useful point is that voter participation has practical steps: checking eligibility, registering by the correct deadline, finding reliable election information, and making a lawful plan to vote. Those steps differ by jurisdiction and election. The Election Assistance Commission, USA.gov and Census Bureau links are U.S.-focused resources. They do not set rules outside the United States, and they should never override an official state or local election authority.
Non-partisan does not mean consequence-free. Registration drives, campus activity, data handling, accessibility, communications with students and the use of public resources can all be regulated. A real organiser should obtain permission where it is needed, protect personal information, use official information, and understand the rules that apply to their institution and location. The scenario cannot make those checks.
The chapter about metrics is a prompt to distinguish activity from outcome, not permission to collect more personal data. A real project should only measure what it is entitled and able to measure, use clear consent and privacy practices, and avoid claims it cannot substantiate. It should never pressure a person to vote, ask for a vote for a candidate, or imply that registration or voting status is known when it is not.
After playing, a useful non-partisan checklist is: official source for the relevant election, deadline to verify, accessibility or language support to share, permission needed for the venue, and privacy limits for volunteer records. This keeps the operational lesson separate from persuasion. The linked sources are public educational starting points, not campaign, election-law or data-protection advice.
An information effort does not necessarily need a contact list or a claim about turnout. Subject to local rules and venue permission, an organiser might make current official information available at the point where people ask for it, direct questions to the election authority, and retain no personal data. That approach may reach fewer people and does not prove impact, but it tests whether the objective can be served with less privacy risk. Accessibility, language, and non-partisan review still have to be designed deliberately.
For one real election, find the official election authority first and record only public information: the relevant deadline, registration or voting route, accessibility support, and official contact page. If organising an activity, separately verify campus permission, applicable election rules and privacy requirements before collecting any information. Never use the exercise to infer who will vote or whom anyone should support. It is a way to practise source-checking and non-partisan planning, not a campaign plan.
Ask which election authority is official, whether a deadline or eligibility statement is current, what permission the venue requires, and what personal data should never be collected. Ask whether a message is factual and non-partisan before sharing it. These checks improve a real information effort, but they do not make this fictional scenario a substitute for election law, institutional approval or the official instructions for a particular voter.
Use the authored links below to examine the main trade-off from another angle.
Turnout work is mostly administration wearing the costume of persuasion. The recurring finding across this run is that the binding constraint is rarely information — most non-voters in a setting like this know that an election is happening and roughly how to take part. What stops them is friction and vagueness: an unsubmitted form, an unknown polling place, an unplanned Thursday.
That is why the specific interventions beat the general ones. "Go vote" changes nobody's day; a named place, a named time and a stated plan told to another person changes several. And it is why the metric matters so much at the end — a campaign that reports sign-ups rather than confirmed registrations will, next year, produce more folders.
None of this depends on which way anyone votes, which is why election administrators publish it openly.
This is a non-partisan narrative simulation about the mechanics of voter registration and turnout work. It does not support or oppose any party, candidate or position, and the stat effects are storytelling devices rather than predictions. Registration deadlines, eligibility and campaigning rules vary by country and jurisdiction — check your own electoral authority.