I spent many hours canvassing in this election, primarily in Montgomery County, MD. The plan in our precincts, among the bluest of the blue in Maryland, was to visit each drop-off voter's residence four times, up to, and including, election day to make sure everyone turned out. In our precincts, I think most of the people we targeted turned out. I want to analyze the turnout statistics for the precincts we targeted to see how much of a difference we made. In the last hours of election day, some of us were sent to Prince Georges County to canvass and to get voters out. In the short time that I canvassed, I found at least a half a dozen people who had not voted. If only more resources had been devoted to the efforts in PG, we could have been more effective.
As I walked the neighborhoods, I had time to think about how we capitalize on what we learned from this campaign and how we work to continue to implement Chairman Dean's 50 state strategy. We cannot afford to rest on our success in this election. We need to develop an infrastructure that strengthens the local parties and that requires less effort to turn out the vote.
One day while canvassing, I came across a resident of the neighborhood who told me that the precinct chair had already talked to most people in the neighborhood. That is good and what all precinct chairs should strive for.
In the early 70s, I worked as a community organizer in southern Virginia, organizing people by areas in which they lived. The idea was not to organize around issues, but to implement an infrastructure through which issues could surface and get action by the group. I'm not sure how successful we ultimately were, but it's a model that we could use today, based upon the existing precinct model. Although I don't know for sure, I think that old city political machines were based on this model. While the old precinct bosses may have been corrupt, there is no reason that we cannot base a 21st Century organizing effort on the precinct model (without the corruption, of course).
Every local party tries to find a precinct chair. Maybe most of those already exist. Based on volunteer lists from this election, local Democratic committees should have a good pool of candidates for precinct workers. Local parties should have a precinct chair in every precinct and a loyal cadre of precinct volunteers to help the chair organize the precinct. Using voter lists from the local central committee, the precinct chair and other precinct volunteers should make contact with every registered Democrat in the precinct. Every registered Democrat should know who their precinct chair is. Voters can be contacted by mail or by canvassing.
This effort should yield additional volunteers for the party and an infrastructure for elections. Precincts could hold picnics, periodic meetings, candidate forums, fundraisers, neighborhood beautification and clean-up campaigns - whatever they want to do - in order to promote the party. Efforts could be made to register voters and generally encourage participation in the democratic process and in the party. The idea is to establish a vibrant and active organization and volunteer base in every precinct.
I realize that I am an optimist and I that what I propose requires a lot of work. Still, with enough volunteers and with an energetic precinct chair, the work can be delegated so that not all the work lands on one person's shoulders. In some cases, one person may bear the brunt of the work. In other precincts, it may be difficult to find a chair. Hopefully, precincts with excess volunteers could help out in others.
Chairman Dean's 50 state strategy doesn't get implemented overnight, but with the investment of organizers and staff in all states, the state parties should aspire to self-sufficiency. They need to move into the counties and the precincts and to begin to generate volunteers and contributors to the local parties and to the DNC.
After spending so much time getting out the vote in this election, let's turn our focus to the state parties, the counties and the precincts. This is our time. Let's build on our success.