On election day I was working a precinct with several other people. Over the course of the day we knocked on every door of targetted voters; we kncoked many of them several times.
On election day I drove three voters to the polls. These people would not have voted if I had not driven them.
When I knock on election day when people tell me that they will vote later I say, “Please be sure to vote. THEY will make me keep coming back until you vote.” One of the women I drove told me early in the day that she would vote later. When I came back, as I told her I would, she said she was just too tired. I urged her to vote, told her I would drive her, told her I would show her the place to park at her polling place where she wouldn’t have to walk so far. She agreed to let me drive her and we had a great time.
Towards the very end of the day I ended up in the other end of the precinct. I looked at the street and realized that I had knocked on doors on that street in the late summer. I remembered the voter specifically that I had persuaded to support Joe. The organization had done the job and there he was as an ID’d voter. I am a big believer in “support cards” that people sign and this voter had signed the card. The voter remembered me and I drove his wife to the polls. She would not have voted, if I had not shown up at their doorstep at 7:00 PM.
Tip O’Neill had a story about a neighbor of his who said she would vote for him even though he hadn’t asked. When he said that because of the friendship between their families he didn’t think he had to the neighbor said, “Tip, people like to be asked!”
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p>I can preach the gospel of voter contact as well as anybody, though I personally prefer to cut turf and let others make the actual knocks.
I poll checked in the early AM, before going out to do door knock. A volunteer from another campaign was there with his blackberry, typing result in as the voters names were called.
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p>The gentleman was very nice and pleasant and alluded to my sheets as the “old fashioned” way. I’m the first to say that technology is great and anything we can do to make the canvass more efficient is awesome. But the bottom line was that without the ground work of ID’ing and persuading your voters, the technology doesn’t matter.
Seems these days there has to be a better way of recording canvass results than using ream after ream of paper. It would save everyone the extra data-entry step if we could just type in the information at each house, then upload it onto the computer when we return to the office. This method would have the added advantage of killing fewer trees as well.
we used PDA’s in the early days of the campaign. I’m blanking on the name of the organization that ran in parrallel to the Kerry campaign. But they would give us PDA’s and we would code the vpters right there. You can do that with staff and key volunteers. As it got closer to election time, amd there were hordes of volunteers, I stopped seeing the PDAs.
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p>I recall one of the canvasses where we used these. People are resistant to change. There was a volunteer who was reluctant to use them. She announced that she was good at “clipboard management”, a term that I had never heard but have found usefull since. I ressured her that I understood how she felt, that I had been nervous the first time I had used one but that they were easy to use. I told her one great advantage was “No tallies.”
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p>”No tallies! I’m there!” and she picked up the PDA and walked her route.
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p>Kate
I lost count of the number of times here in VA when I encountered a voter who was marked as both “not home” AND with a support/oppose result. A little common sense and attention to detail will go a long way!
a number of “Not Homes” that were supporters, as well as people clearly supporting the opponent.
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p>How you ask? Lawn signs.
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p>I saw houses with signs for my candidate that were not coded as supporters. We believe that friends or unions gave them the signs. I saw signs for our opponent who were not on the list. Some campaigns want them coded based on lawn signs. Others don’t. There is a the loss of ability to include that kind of evidence when forced into what you call an “idiot proof” system.
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p>There are always exceptions. See down thread for a discussion of the value of building relationships.
I would say though, that such people should only be coded as supporting for two reasons. First, “not home” is usually used to determine whether another attempt needs to be made at contact which seems to not be necessary in your scenario. Also, at least on the VAN system we used in VA, the program would not let you code both a contact result and a support result. You had to choose and without another notation like a yard sign being present, those of us doing data entry had no idea how to enter it.
for a strong GOTV operation, go with the highest rating. If unsure, pull the voter.
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p>If there is not excess capacity, don’t spend the time contacting a “maybe” supporter at the expense of not pulling a good voter.
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p>I always ask. If I don’t get a reasonable answer, I use my best judgment.
ACT – America Coming Together.
If anyone needs evidence, it’s all here.
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p>A must read for all progressive activists.
I was actually thinking of that book, but I am at work and trying to get cuaght up.
I’ve got a copy that I’ll happily lend out to anyone interested.
Kate: great work for our friend Joe O’Brien! Worcester is the big winner to have such a great mayor-elect! Wish I could have been in Worcester yesterday to walk the walk with all of you! Bravo, standing O, Joe!
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p>In Sept. 1986, the Boston Globe printed an Editorial on Primary Day that I clipped and kept. Your post made me think of it once again.
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p>”Saluting Political Foot Soldiers
“Most of us know some persons who got caught up in politics. They held placards at traffic intersections, risking life and lungs to wave a sign with someone else’s name on it, trying to dent the consciousness of zombie-like commuters. or they worked a storefront headquarters, stuffing envelopes, making phone calls, pouring coffee: or they rang doorbells, or, wrote fund-raising letters, or handed out leaflets at the town landfill.
“Today they’ll be manning and womaning the polls, or driving voters. It may be early this evening, or not till tomorrow morning, that they find that their side didn’t win.
“This one is for those who’ve done all they could in behalf of someone else, but will still come up short tonight.
“Candidates for public office, even the unsuccessful ones, have thir own rewards. There are psychic gains, in personal growth and increased reputation, that soothe the pain for the defeated candidate.
“But as voters trek poll-ward today to express the people’s will, let us say a word for those who labored in behalf of a candidate or a cause, and lost.
“People work in campaigns more often for altruism than for personal gain, if the truth be known. Getting together in the name of a cause or a candidate is a wellspring of democracy. it’s what makes this system work as well as it does, which is better than most other systems in the history of civilization.
“We can tick off a dozen movements that sprouted, and then soared, because bands of persons got together and went to work within the political system. But not everybody wins. And on this Primary Day, we take time out to salute the foot soldiers who don’t get on TV, who don’t get their names in the newspaper. All they so is help knit our society together, and spin a web of community that has benefits far beyond the political.
“Politics in this country truly does work from the bottom up. To those whose cause or candidate falls short this time, we remind you there is another season. next year can come; just look at the Red Sox.”
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One lady whose door I knocked yesterday was going to vote for Joe even though she really isn’t in line with his politics, because he had made a connection with her. The potential for a candidate him- or herself to influence voters’ choices when they directly meet them is tremendous (especially when that candidate is as personable and sincere as Joe is).
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p>But I think that drops off considerably when it is a volunteer doing the knocking, although I agree that it beats phone banks by a long shot. What I have found to be the most effective use of my time is what I called this year my “personal phone bank” — calling 50 or so of my own contacts who know me and trust me well enough to actually vote the way I am recommending. Several of them thanked me for calling them! And one stellar elderly gentleman friend of mine, who lives in a senior housing building where you probably can’t get in to door knock, passed on my recommendations to about 30 of his friends in the building. The effectiveness of this approach is tied to all the relationship building that came before the phone call. It says something about the importance of community.
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p>I was fortunate yesterday to be able to door knock in my home precinct. I especially like this because I can genuinely identify myself as “your neighbor” and I often say, “a great thing about doing this is that I get to know my neighbors better.” Part of the “old fasioned way” is to have precinct captains, who really get to know people and can deliver those votes.
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p>Joe pledged to campaign differently and to govern differently — in both cases, to build in real listening and real community engagement. I truly don’t know anyone who is more dedicated to community building than Joe O’Brien, so I think he’ll really pull it off. I can’t wait to be part of it.
As a volunteer with the Patrick/Murray campaign the focus has been on recruting people who will become organizers of 50 people in their own community.
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p>I’ve been thinking about the “geogrpahic community” approach versus the “personal community” approach.
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p>One of the problems in either approach is that there are both personal communities and gegraphic communities in which everyone votes and there are lots of active people; there is the converse where you won’t find an organizer and the people don’t vote.
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p>My personal community is Democratic activists. They all vote. My other communities are my extended family and friends in the environmental community. They all tend to vote as well.
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p>A concern that I have with the “organize your personal community” approach is that people are well intentioned, but in an unstructured approach there is less follow through. When people block off time and come to an office to help a campaign, many people take that commitment more seriously than if they block off an hour or two to call friends while they are at home.