Last night, I finally got directly involved in the campaign. I worked a few hours on the phone banks for
America Coming Together. ACT has been working hard registering new voters in swing states and finding volunteers to get out the vote on election day.
For some time, I've been registered as a volunteer on the Kerry site, but I've been unable to attend any functions. I signed up to help in PA, but I was a little baffled on how to actually do anything and was disappointed that I didn't get any messages from the campaign beyond the mass emails notice that arrive every couple of days.
Then a couple of weeks ago, I checked out ACT's website after reading about them here. I finally found a phone bank session that fit my schedule and signed up. Here's what happened on my first night.
I arrived to find a handful of volunteers in the lobby of a telemarkting firm near Times Square. June, our trainer, arrived and took us into the conference room to begin our orientation. She began by explaining that tonight we would be calling registered Democrats to identify people who were willing to volunteer to help with ACT's get out the vote drive. She also pointed out that tonight we were shifting focus. The original plan was to call voters in Ohio, however, the drive was already going well enough there, that they wanted us to shift our focus to Florida. It certainly sounded like a good omen for Ohio.
I was relieved that the script didn't include any persuasion. Basically I had to ask two questions of prospective volunteers: "Did they support Senator Kerry for president?" and if they answered yes, "Were they interested in volunteering before or on election day?" There was a bit more meat to the script, of course, but I had been nervous that I would be talking to undecideds and trying to persuade them to vote Kerry. I can feel it in my bones that Kerry is going to make a good president and that it's critical to defeat Bush, but I find it's hard to convince people who are truly on the fence sometimes.
Anyway the orientation was great. It lasted about an hour and June was very thorough and friendly. We were going to use professional telemarketing equipment where the script was right on the screen taking us through the steps of the call. I was nervous, but eager to begin.
My first few calls didn't go as well as I'd hoped, but I doubt they go smoothly for anyone. I was quite nervous and fumbled over the online script. I seemed to get more than my fair share of busy signals and wrong numbers, too. But after a few calls, I took a break and carefully went over the script to tighten up my approach. That definitely helped. One trick I figured out was to ask to speak to the target voter first and identify myself second. Sometimes people would shut down a little too quickly if I started by saying, "Hi, I'm Kevin from America Coming Together." The other thing I figured out was to make sure I called myself a volunteer. I think it makes a subtle difference to these voters that I'm not a paid telemarketer, but a volunteer.
One of the most encouraging things I noticed was that so many of the Kerry supporters I talked to in Florida said they had already voted. Probably half the people with whom I had a full conversation had already done so. You could also tell that these voters were fired up to win on November 2nd. There was a real passion on the other end of most of the calls.
In the two hours I worked the phones, I didn't manage to recruit any volunteers. So many said they were working two jobs, or they were elderly voters who were going to vote (or already had), but simply couldn't volunteer. Still, I did manage to talk to a few people about the ACT website and perhaps 1 or 2 of them will follow up on their own and get involved. I talked to one voter who had already volunteered several times to help the local Kerry organization. I comiserated with another who lived in a very Republican suburb. I grew up in a very Repulican small town in Illinois, so I know what it feels like to be outnumbered.
One thing to note is that there is a need for bilingual volunteers. A large chunk of the people I contacted spoke Spanish and some had a very hard time understanding me. The volunteer working next to me could speak some Spanish and it made all the difference on a few of her calls. If you are bilingual get your butt to a phone bank. Recruiting Spanish speaking volunteers in FL will be key to winning there, I would think.
It was definitely time well spent and I intend to go back several times over the next week to put in some more time calling Florida or whichever state we move on to next. And I'm going to get on one of those buses to PA on election day. I'm so relieved that there is an organization like ACT who is really doing something to effectively channel the energies of people like me who want to do more than just vote on November 2nd.
I hope you can get involved too.