This will be a short diary; I just wanted to let everyone who has donated to the WI Deer Hunting group know that our ads are now running. We won't share detailed information during the campaign, for obvious reasons, but since going up last night our ads have been clicked on hundreds of times and seen by tens of thousands of Wisconsin residents. Obviously, we don't need Kossacks clicking on the ads, but you can see the site they go to here. If you use Facebook, it would be helpful if you go to the site and click the Facebook 'like' button so we can get the number of shares up; there are Twitter and Google+ buttons as well.
If you missed the previous diaries, see the Deer vs Walker post for the backstory.
Right now, what we need help with is research. We'd like to put up a few more ads that tie both Walker and some of the other republicans being recalled to the deer privatization. If you've seen any good quotes that we might be able to use, please let us know (or PM me if it's really good). We are reading all of the comments, even if we don't respond to all of them, and we made a number of changes to the site based on those comments before we started running the ads.
We also need help spreading the word. There are a LOT of groups that are interested in this topic, many of whom were already pushing the story before we got involved; we want to make sure they know about the website so they can use it in their own efforts if they so desire. The media is also getting involved on the pro-Walker side (see, for example, this column on the JSO) and we need people in the comments correcting the lies and misunderstandings spread by the right. Remember: if you comment, be polite! Our goal is to change people's minds, not to annoy them; we don't need to turn republicans into democrats, we just need to convince them that voting for Walker is not something they want to do.
We've collected more than double our original fundraising goal of $800, but we're still accepting donations; at our current burn rate, the money donated thus far will last through Friday. To date we've had donations from around 50 people, all across the country; donations have ranged from $2 to $200. The site we're using charges a monthly fee, not a percentage, so every penny you donate goes straight to the recall effort. We've spent $52 on images (which are being used both on the website and in the ads; we'll probably be buying a few more as we rotate in more ads) and 99 cents on the domain name; all the rest is going straight to the ads. That $2 donation is still another four people looking at our website and possibly changing their votes! Not only are our ads showing a much higher than normal click-through rate (which validates our assumption that this is a topic people are very interested in), they help counter the huge number of pro-Walker ads currently showing. (Interestingly enough, I logged into FB recently and my ad bar was pro-Walker, pro-Walker, anti-Walker).
Obviously we can't match Walker's level of spending, but the election looks close enough that our little educational project here has the potential to help change the outcome. This, my friends, is what democracy looks like!
Mon May 28, 2012 at 9:22 AM PT: We now have a .pdf flier available for people to print out; it's available to download from the website.