Your Assignment for This Week

Political action EVERYONE can take!

You may have noticed that Halloween candy is out in the stores. No, I’m not advising you to go and buy some now, nor do I want to bring up the love ‘em or hate ‘em battle regarding candy corn.

My point is that Halloween is only 6 days before Election Day and there is something you can do NOW so you’re prepared.

Did you know that you can put a label on every candy bar you pass out? Alternately, you can do what I do, and visit your neighbors during trick or treating hours and pass out candy bars to THEM with labels on them. In some neighborhoods, like mine, there are only a few kids, so it’s a good time to go door-to-door.

My labels say:

VOTE NOVEMBER 5^TH
POLLS OPEN 7 am to 8 pm
VOTE BLUE THE WHOLE BALLOT!

Yours can say other things, based on local conditions. If you live in one of the lucky states where all voting is by mail, you can use a label to remind people to get their ballots returned. While you’re out reverse trick-or-treating, your spouse, housemate, etc. can stay home and pass out candy to kids. Those candy bars have stickers, too. And yes, you can legally hand out labeled candy bars to trick-or-treaters. Just make sure everything is packaged and not loose.

So this week, you can go buy your labels, design and print them, and you’re all ready to slap them on your candy bars.

Other ideas for disseminating labeled candy bars:

• If you work in an office, sneak in early and leave out a bowl of candy. Then leave work and return at the normal time.

• If you are out and about on Halloween, you can give candy to shopkeepers, cashiers, people standing on line — wherever you are, you can hand out candy!

• Workers in your neighborhood? Give them candy.

• Getting deliveries? Leave candy outside your door for the delivery people, under a sign that says: “Thank you for delivering my package. Please help yourself to a snack.”

The rest of this post is a tutorial on how to make labels.  If you read through this, it will become obvious that I really HAVE spend the past 30 years producing training!

First, you’ll want to get Avery 5160 labels.¹ They have them at Staples, Amazon, and most places that sell office supplies. This size label will fit on a standard size mini-candy bar (or anything bigger.)

Then, you’ll want to create your labels in Word.

Open a Word doc. Click (1) on the “Mailings” tab, and click (2) on “Labels”.

If you’ve never made labels before, the screen shown below is the pop-up you’ll see. Otherwise, it will display the most recent label you created. Note the area marked “1”. This area indicates the type of label you want to use. The default is a Microsoft choice. Click in that box.

This pop-up will appear. Click the down arrow noted as “1”, and then use the scroll bar (2) to find “5160 Address Labels”. Then click “OK” at the bottom of the pop-up.

Note that the correct label (1) is now displayed.

Next, in the Address area, enter your label text (1). Here’s mine.

You can enter what you want, but realize that you have a size limit to ensure your text fits on the label. There is a lack of ability to work with font, font size, and layout here, but you’ll have your opportunity soon. So, don’t worry – this is your first set of candy labels! When you’ve got your message complete, click (2) “New Document.” A page of labels will be displayed, sample below (not the whole page):

If you are happy with your labels, print ONE PAGE of labels, to be sure everything aligns properly, and then print as many as you need! (There will be 30 labels per page.)

If you want to get fancy, you can edit your labels. For example, I like to do mine in blue and center them. Click Ctrl+A to select the whole page, and then make changes on Word’s top bar. You can play with the font size, whether you want to center the message, and the font color. Here are my labels once I’m done:

I hope you have found this to be political action you can take! If you live in the United States, YOU CAN DO THIS! (For those of you in other countries, leverage this for YOUR elections!) If you have any technical problems, let me know and I’ll talk you through it.

PLEASE share this with your family and friends. Let’s cover America with properly labeled candy! It would mean a lot to me, personally, if you shared this so the idea spreads.

1. I use these labels because they’re a good size, and the layout is available. You could use other labels of your choice. You’ll then need to select your specific label type later in the process.