The New York Times’ recent story on college students and the President has a few problems. The most serious is that the article takes the exact wrong approach in going to students who worked for Obama in 2008 and asking them what they planned to do in 2012. This misses the crucial point that over a four-year span almost no young person is doing the same things he or she was doing at the beginning. College freshmen have very different concerns from college seniors. Yet, the article’s main point should be underscored -- pure enthusiasm will not carry Obama and the Democrats to victory. We need to replace enthusiasm with organization, and we need a plan for how we’re going to do it. Obviously some enthusiasm will return as we get closer to election day but it still will take more effort to get each additional young voter to the polls this time than last. This effort has never been more important. If you drill down in the most recent Public Policy Polling, you will find that Obama leads his closest challenger Mitt Romney by a massive 66% to 25% among young voters --larger even than his margin in 2008.
The good news is that the Obama campaign seems to be making the youth vote a priority but it needs to be an essential component of all Democrat campaigns and organization. Those working on the recall in Wisconsin should take note that the lack of youth turnout lost the supreme court race there in 2011. Every campaign in a state not targeted by the Obama campaign needs to know that if you don’t turnout young voters, you lose. Progressive organizations such as Moveon.org need to focus its dollars specifically on youth efforts. We need to do more than make young voters a priority; we also need to get at what works and what doesn’t in getting them to turnout. In particular, we need to adapt traditional field the tactics to the college environment. We need to build lists of students and treat them as important as the voter file. If we have trouble recruiting young organizers, we need to spend money to get them. The reality is that based upon the numbers voters under 30 are the only thing standing between us and an extremely reactionary government.
Here is a memo I wrote outlining a plan to boost college campus turnout. It is not perfect, but as progressives we need to push ideas like this with every resource we have. If we don’t make young voters a priority, we will all suffer.
Introduction:
Young people have become a strong part of the Democratic base; yet Democratic plans for increasing their turnout have not kept pace with their importance.
• In 2008, voters 18 to 29 gave President Obama 66% of the vote, as did the subset of college-age voters 18 to 24 . Congressional Democrats got a similar percentage of young voters that year.
• In 2010, a down year, 18-to-24 year-olds still cast 57% of their votes for Democrats .
This large generation gap in favor of Democrats is relatively new but it has now appeared in the past four elections: 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010. Democrats in 2012 and beyond must capitalize on this age cohort's voting preferences and devote energy and resources to turning them out. These days, there are not a lot of votes to spare.
The Plan:
It is important to realize that young people and college students are not synonymous, and Democrats obviously need a plan to get all kinds of young people to vote. The following plan, however, leaves young people aside for the moment and focuses instead on how to turn out college students and, even more specifically, how to turn out a single college campus. Some caveats apply: as each school is different, each plan would need to be individualized to fit the particulars of each school. Regardless, the basic framework would be the same at every school.
• In 2008, every college newspaper, except one, endorsed Obama .
• We wholeheartedly believe that adherence to the framework provided in How To Turnout a College Campus would win a majority of college students to vote for Democrats.
Understanding the Differences:
Organizing a college campus is different than other forms of political organizing. A few simple facts illustrate the point. Canvassers can not simply walk into college dorms or put campaign material into student mailboxes; one must be a student on campus. Another difference: students check their mailboxes far less frequently than other groups.
A more significant problem for success in college organizing is the tremendous amount of turnover. People leave at a rate of 25% a year, nearly replacing themselves completely within four years. This means that almost no one who voted for Obama on campus in 2008 will be around by the 2012 election. This is not how politics works in much of the rest of the country. In a similar four-year period, 80% of people of the people attending state conventions would be the same, as would participants in the Iowa Caucuses. This lack of continuity is a large part of why colleges are under-utilized in political campaigns. The pace is dramatically different. Rather than stay stuck on politico time, we instead need to force ourselves to adopt a different approach. To turn out a college campuses successfully will require a timeframe of 15 months and is incredibly involved. One thing needs to be clear, however, there are no short cuts. If you try to cut steps, you will decrease your effectiveness.
Explaining U.S. University:
The approach we propose can be understood by looking at how it would work at hypothetical "U.S. University."
This university is located in a swing state in the Midwest with an enrollment of 10,000. In 2008, 3,000 votes were cast in college precincts, while in 2010 that number dropped to 1,000. A larger turnout at U.S. University will mean more net votes for Democratic candidates.
10 Steps in 15 Months: the Plan for Organizing U.S. University:
Step 1. September-October 2011
Finding and Feeding the "Meaders" at U.S. University
• Recruit 5-50 “Meaders” to head and organize the15-month GOTV effort on campus
• Look for “Meaders” among Politics students, student leaders, student clubs and organizations, minority student associations, and athletics teams to support the campaign focused on their respective specific interests and emphasizing the tangible benefits of helping their peers register and remember to vote.
Why “Meaders”?
As Margaret Mead famously said: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." In line with this idea, the most important starting point is to find the small group of students who will execute the campaign. Generally speaking, it will be between 5 and 50 students depending on the size of the school. At U.S. University with a student body of 10,000, the goal should be roughly 20 students. The ideal “Meader” will be is a freshman, sophomore, or junior with some organizational experience at the University who is energetic, motivated, and excited about the campaign. Seniors and students who will be studying abroad may participate, but it is important to target students who can commit to the full 15-month sustained program commitment. The crucial element of any “Meader” is their genuine desire to encourage other students to vote.
“Meaders” can be recruited by looking toward the University’s College Democrats and progressive organizations, student government, student activist groups, and in student identity groups with in-person recruitment visits, flyers, and e-mail announcements around the university. It is important to recruit a diversity of students for this position. “Meaders” should complete a short written application and participate in a brief interview in person or via Skype. Involvement in the group should be marketed as a leadership opportunity that will promote Democracy on their campus and enable students to participate in meaningful social change.
The pitch to these students is simple and it doesn't matter from whom it is delivered: whether an organizer from the state party, a particular campaign or the president's reelect. The message is that the campaign is seeking students who care about voting themselves and who want to make sure their campus votes.
Once one “Meader” is recruited, more will naturally follow. It is again important to cast a wide a net as possible. If the core doesn't represent enough of the campus, it will be hard to fix that later. Therefore, “Meaders” should be recruited from a variety of places. Specific Places to seek support: Black Students Associations, Hispanic Students Associations, Activist Issue Groups, and tables at large social and sporting events.
If you are struggling to reach the "Meaders," going to faculty or even support staff for a lay of the land at U.S. University might be helpful. Remember your ultimate goal: getting students to vote, not getting students to vote for a particular candidate or party (that will take care of itself). That means faculty and others are likely to help because your effort doesn't appear partisan. Once you have your team, it is important to stay in touch through calls, e-mails and texts, whatever it takes to keep people engaged. Additionally, if someone in the groups loves inside political info, try and supply some. If others want to go to events or lobby for the environment, help them do it. Make sure you find ways to reward the people who are working hard for you.
Once a University “Captain” or Head Organizer is designated, interest meetings with pizza should be set up in central locations on campus.
Step 2. November 2011
One Year Out Meeting
• Determine the reliability of “Meaders” and establish rapport
In November, most likely on a weekend, get the group together. This is important for a number of reasons.
First, if someone has told you he or she will help, but the person then can't make a meeting, or worse doesn't respond or show up, you can begin to figure out who isn't reliable and can stop relying on them early.
Second, you want to get this group to like each other and count on each other as much as possible. College organizing is not the same as other political organizing. Rarely do students gain much by rising in organizations. The major reason that students attend campus events is to socialize with people they know and like. While often students are primarily attracted to the cause, more often than not, it becomes about the people you work with as much as the cause.
Third, you need to establish a group culture that focuses on the goal of getting people to vote -- not getting them to vote for a particular party or candidate. Obviously, some students will have partisan ideas but the organizer, although partisan, should not stress that. The culture should not scream College Democrats because a lot of people the group will need to attract are turned off by “party politics.” Building a group culture around the importance of voting and the need to be inclusive is what matters.
Fourth, starting a year ahead of time means that the students can come up with the plan of attack rather than just the organizer. No one knows U.S. University better then U.S. University Students.
Step 3. November-December 2011, January-March 2012
Get the lists and make friends
• Capitalize on “Meaders” personal relationships and establish points of contact
One of the major advantages of having college students involved is that they have access to information an outsider would find it difficult to get from a University. The ideal would be to build a voter list from a complete student database, cross referenced with Facebook information, e-mail lists from campus organizations and voter registration lists. The goal is to have a profile of each potential voter, and eliminate those who might be likely to vote against our interest. From the profile, the next step would be to identify a point of contact for each student, someone the student already knows who can help us encourage him or her to register and then ultimately to vote. Students will respond far more to a text from a peer than a text from Barack Obama’s impersonal automated text service. The "Meaders," your core student group, can gather this information for three out of four classes on campus. The senior class should be the catered to, but not focused on because its members are not likely to be close enough to campus in November to successfully outreach to them.
Most importantly, the “Meaders” also need to be around campus, helping out other groups and making friends. If a “Meader” spends time now helping others in their political and other efforts, when crunch time comes next year, he or she will be seen as a trusted helpmate in what matters to them, rather than a johnny-come-lately fishing for his or her own cause. The best way to get someone to care about what you care about is to care about what they care about.
This is the soft recruiting phase.
Step 4. Announcement of next-year housing to end of spring semester
Voter registration drive
• Register much of the campus now
Once you have your lists, and the core group has grown slowly and has made friends outside itself, it is time to go at the main challenge of the campaign – to register to vote as much of the campus as possible. This is complicated by the fact that U.S. University students don't usually know about their housing for next year until around April 1, and therefore can’t register until after that date. Yet, it is absolutely critical that the three classes of students who will be back next fall are registered as soon as possible, ideally in the spring semester. This is essential for a number of reasons. The first is that states’ registration deadlines are often in September or very early October. A missed deadline is a missed voter.
Second, there will be an entire freshman class that will need to be registered as soon as it arrives on campus in the fall. Registering this group will be a challenge because it won’t have many connections to the campus you can call upon. If you’ve already registered the upper classes, you can focus more of your energy on this new group.
Third, getting a sense of registration numbers early can help you plan better. A newly registered voter is much more useful to the campaign than a potential new voter.
Fourth, registering voters in the spring will be a test of your organization that will provide a good indication of what you will be able to accomplish in September and October. Mistakes in April are fixable, mistakes discovered in September or October are not.
Fifth, a spring registration drive will help you figure out who on your list of students you won’t be able to convince to vote. The campus will have non-voters; nothing can be done to get everyone to vote. Nationwide only 60% of all eligible voters vote. Knowing early who you will have to write off will give you a good idea of how many students your volunteers will need to reach out to. Bottom line: you need to have much of your campus registered in the spring semester.
Step 5: Admitted Students’ Day
• Register students-to-be when they are excited
With much of the soon-to-be sophomore, junior and senior class registered, you need to begin to find ways into the freshman class. There will be 2,500 new students who need to be registered in what amounts to a six-week dash. Fortunately, U.S. University hosts an admitted student day each year for those thinking of attending the University. This is an essential opportunity to rope in as many incoming freshmen as possible. An upperclassman must be charged with making contact with these students on Admitted Students Day and then keeping in touch with those who decide to attend. Admitted students also will begin to speak with their new classmates via social media and you can therefore begin to assemble data on them. Admitted Students Day is a time of high anticipation and excitement for new students, so this is a prime opportunity to register them.
Step 6: The summer
• School’s out, but the campaign is still on.
This is a crucial time. To be successful in the fall, you need to decide what you’re going to do in the fall. You need to decide now if an event is worth having, if a concert is worth sponsoring, if a guest speaker is worth inviting. As much as possible these activities need to be planned in the summer. It is also important that those in the group don't lose their enthusiasm over what seems like a long break. The staff organizer needs to be on top of the core group during this time. Those who take calls and respond to e-mails during the summer are likely to be active in September. In politics and in college, there are always flakes. That’s even more true of college politics. Summer is a good time to weed out flakes. A weekly conference call might be wise, but the exact details are probably best left to individual groups.
Step 7. September 2012
The registration dash and the proper plan
• Target freshmen to register in their classes, dorms, and by providing social opportunities for them
Once school opens in September, every day should be like the day before the election. Of most importance are the 2,500 freshmen just arriving on campus. A mad dash needs to be conducted. Depending on the state, you can have as few as two weeks, and as many six weeks to conduct the registration campaign. U.S. University falls in at four weeks. To get a high level of registration, you will need to register about 100 new students a day for the month of September. Every avenue needs to be explored: going door-to-door in freshman dorms; speaking, with permission, in big freshman classes; including a registration form in the packets freshmen receive on orientation day. Additionally, “Meaders” should plan one large event specifically for freshmen in their dorms. When students arrive to campus, they are eager to socialize. However the plan is carried out, urgency is what is most important. As you’re conducting this mad dash, you need to be planning your other efforts. You need to be doing everything you couldn’t do during the summer as new information comes in. Your actual GOTV plan for the campus should be finished with at least a month to go.
Step 8. October 2012
New Wave GOTV
• Individual volunteers must be responsible for individual voters
The first thing that needs to be done is to obtain a complete and accurate list of campus voters from the registrar of voters. Even before you’ve got the complete list, you can take the data you got from the registration process and begin to assign individual voters to individual volunteers, with the original “Meaders” managing the volunteers assigned to individuals. The goal will be for each volunteer to be responsible for somewhere between 25 and 50 voters. Ideally, the volunteers will know many of the voters assigned to them, but even if they don’t, they should be able to reach each individual voter. Using everyone in your organization to supply information, it should be possible to have a cell phone number, e-mail address, photo, campus address and some social networking information for each voter.
It is essential to have enough contact with each voter to get our message across but not enough to overwhelm the voter. The volunteers need to be able to either answer questions, or feed them to someone who knows more on the campus. It’s better to have one person contact the voter and answer questions, whether political or technical. By maintaining personal relationships, you can overcome much of what makes political interactions different and less pleasant than the other interactions people have. You can also keep the politics about the students. Rather than endless discussion of Medicare, the campus volunteers can keep the discussion focused on why the president's re-election matters to students. By having these conversations and passing along information, volunteers can help organizers figure out who opposes the president and thus eliminate them from the universe of voters by election day.
Step 9. No poaching
• Students will be most effective at GOTV efforts with students
Once anyone is doing any political work anywhere, everyone comes after them to do more work or different kinds of work. You can’t let that happen with your student volunteers. Students must talk to students. Someone else can make generic GOTV calls. Someone else can knock on non-student doors, or do data entry, or work the door at events. The reality is that college students are much more valuable on campus then off. Poaching of college talent for other purposes is one reason campus voting programs aren’t successful. In short, preventing poaching is essential for success. If we value the program, it should be an obvious point but the demands will be great. It’s important to keep everyone on board.
Step 10. Election day
• “Meaders” follow up with their peers, and the campus is mobilized
The night before election day - Every student organizer should send a text to every student voter reminding them to vote and informing them of voting hours.
Polls open - A traditional vote-checking program should begin, using early “Meaders” and as many campaign staffers as needed. A central office, which could even be a dorm room, needs to be set up a half hour before the polls open to manage the data as it comes in.
9:00 a.m. - Organizers should send follow-up e-mails reminding students to vote.
10:00 a.m. - The list of who has voted should be collected, and students informed of which of their students have voted and which have not.
After 10:00 a.m. - A group of volunteers should walk around campus with signs reminding people to vote, and informing them of the transportation available to the polling place. University has three polling locations, some as far as 1.5 miles away.
Shuttle buses or even limos should be running from central campus locations to the polls on the half hour. A small number of cars should also be available to take voters the minute they wish to leave.
2:00 p.m. - A new list of voters should be obtained. At this point, each organizer should begin calling their students, asking them when and how they plan to vote. Ideally they should keep cycling through calls until they actually reach the voter.
4:00 p.m, - Another voting list should be obtained, followed by another text reminding students to vote.
With two-and-a-half-hours until the polls close (it varies from state to state), the team should be assembled with the mission of tracking down students who have yet to vote. Armed with photos, perhaps culled from Facebook, and a list of all non-voting students, the team should troll campus hot spots for missing voters.
Until the polls close - Another reminder e-mail should go out to non-voting students. With an hour or so until the polls close, every remaining non-voting student should have their Facebook wall explode with go vote messages. They should get a call every 10 minutes, and the hunt for them should continue. The end goal should be getting about 6,500 of U.S. University’s 10,000 students to cast a vote on the U.S. University campus, with 4,800 of those votes going to the President and other Democrats.
http://www.cnn.com/...
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/...
http://www.nonprofitvote.org/...