Twitter followers and my facebook friends may have noticed that I am on a “Doors Every Day” kick. I have been campaigning for Democratic candidates every day for 26 days straight. I’ve been canvassing for a number of campaigns from President Obama’s reelection campaign, to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for U. S. Senate to a local rep race. All Democrats of course.
One of the things that I miss about the soapblox platform is the ability to create a survey.
I’m wondering what people think about some of the mechanics of canvassing. What formats do you like or dislike? Have you tried canvassing with an electronic device, like an iphone or an android? Do you like to have odd on one page and even on another? An odd packet and even packet? Thoughts on font sizes? Page breaks?
I’d be curious to hear from both first time canvassers and those who are out volunteering regularly.
Back in 2004 I used a PDA supplied by ACT. I’ve tried MinVAN in an iphone. I like to know at a glance what to expect… Age and party of all targeted voters. I don’t get that on the iphone, but I hear that on an IPad it works great.
PLEASE be sure to carefully code your responses, make them legible and only pick one answer. I’m amazed how often I get a door that’s marked for example both as a 1 and not home. Which is it? VAN will only let me enter one choice.
I’ve volunteered to canvas for a few years, but you’re far ahead of me with the PDA / MinVAN approach — I’ve never progressed beyond the basic clipboard with pen or pencil!
I’d love to work off my phone or a PDA (primarily because I wouldn’t have to be standing at the door with a sheaf of papers, making the voter feel like nothing more than a number on a list), and I’ll have to do a little looking into whether anything is available.
My door to door work is always in Chelsea, where addresses are densely packed and where I know a decent number of the voters. For that reason, I prefer to be responsible for both even and odd on the same street — I’m often criss-crossing, especially where people are outside and available.
The Warren campaign’s packets (which I worked off of most recently this Saturday afternoon — great weather for it, though limited engagement with the race from the voters I spoke with) are both odd and even, but they’re ordered based on a walk path that assumes you do one side of the street and then circle around. They also seemed to randomize the IDs in a given street between packets — two of our groups on Saturday were hopscotching each other for different addresses on the same street. I understand how the lists are generated, but it doesn’t fit as well as it could with the area I’m covering.
I’d go for a smaller font and no page breaks along with sequential addresses (rather than even / odd). This all to limit the amount of time spent shuffling back and forth.
For data entry, I always wish for a “spoke with the person who was home” option — since my area has relatively low partcipation, it’s quite common that only one member of a multi-person household is on the list. So I’m often speaking with a child or spouse of the voter when the voter isn’t available.
Leaving the technical details behind…I found it interesting that the hired staff from the Warren campaign was very focused on knock count, in my opinion almost to the exclusion of communication and content. We were out for the same period of time on Saturday, and the campaign staffer covered 5x more addresses than I did in the same neighborhood. Given that I didn’t wind up in any truly drawn out conversations, the difference made me think that the campaign might be better off with a postage stamp (ie, if just a manual lit drop, might as well not walk) — there’s no way conversations were happening at that pace!
A state legislative candidate in Missouri helped save a child’s life while canvassing. He wasn’t even supposed to ring that particular bell.