I've diaried before about my thoughts on how to improve GOTV programs. I decided to share some of these with MoveOn and am posting my electronic correspondence to them here.
Greetings,
First, thanks for all your hard work. I've followed MoveOn since its inception and have been very impressed with the growth of your organization. I recently participated in Call For Change, and I also canvassed door-to-door both for the 2004 presidential elections and recently for Jerry McNerney. I'm hoping that you've now had a chance to catch your breath enough to begin thinking about what comes next.
I see a big opportunity for MoveOn -- or for some other organization or a combination -- to improve on canvassing and phone banking by developing better training materials. I'm wondering if you have plans to do so, and wondering how I might contribute to such an effort. I have some observations and ideas but not a tremendous amount of time. I have some time, but not a lot.
Here's the basis of this idea. In 2004, in Ohio, the objective was to GOTV and to spend no time trying to persuade people who were not already committed to Kerry. This time around, the message was less clear, but there was still a strong emphasis on planting a seed and I never encountered materials that were well-developed to help us persuade people who were undecided.
Several simple tools could be very helpful in this regard. First, video and audio materials illustrating mock phone calls or door-knocks would go a long way towards helping volunteers in 2008 to sway undecideds. These materials would illustrate how to take advantage of situations where an individual says they haven't decided and continue the conversation in a positive direction rather than simply saying "thank you, have a nice day." I've seen a few nice anecdotes posted here and there, but not as part of training materials. Second, training sessions to give people the opportunity to do mock calling would be helpful. I'm suggesting something beyond the 'practice mode' of Call For Change. These would be sessions where people could critique each other and role-play different situations to learn how to make the most of all of them. If such an effort were to start 6 months from now, there would be plenty of time to train lots of people before the 2008 campaigns start in earnest, by which time it's tough to spend the time to train that many volunteers.
I can elaborate on these ideas and offer others, and I suspect you have already been thinking along similar lines. I'd be interested in your plans in this regard because I was surprised at how little of this I saw in any of the Dem-associated GOTV efforts this year.
Thanks!