Last night, the Florida Supreme Court “approved a ballot measure that, if successful this fall, would undo that ruling and restore the broad abortion access the state had before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.” Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers had been waiting on this decision; many of them had circulated petitions and a few volunteers joined organizers in checking the petitions our volunteers had circulated to make sure the voters who signed their petitions were voters registered at the address they gave.
Hope Springs volunteers collected 24,629 verified petitions from valid voters. But, as those who have been reading my diaries about Ohio may remember, that’s not where it ends. We have a database of voters who signed the petitions our volunteers circulated. Voters who signed one of our volunteers’ petitions will now receive “thank you” postcards or notes for signing and, thereafter, received follow-up communications to verify their support of the Constitutional Right to Reproductive Freedom. These are important because we shouldn’t assume that someone supports something just because they signed a petition to get it on the ballot. There are voters out there who will sign anything, for numerous reasons (just as there are voters who won’t sign anything!), but generally because they believe Floridians deserve a vote, a choice, a voice on the issue at hand.
But these are also “hero” (or heroine) communications. We did it, and you were essential in that accomplishment! We want to remind these 24,629 that they signed the petition, that they can take ownership of getting it on the ballot. In the euphoria, we want to get them committed to voting for the amendment in November, which means committed to turning out to vote.
This allows us to add the voter to our single issue database. Everything we do is directed at GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote). Early Organizing allows us to be that pro-active, to continue to expand our knowledge of the electorate to help elect Democrats and win votes for the things the grassroots supports.
That ballot initiative would enshrine abortion access in the state constitution and ensure that no law shall “prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”
If approved by voters, it would roll back Florida’s abortion ban to viability, which is considered around 24 weeks of pregnancy. The initiative would need 60 percent approval to pass. The proposal would not alter the state legislature’s authority to require parental notification for a minor seeking an abortion.
[...]
In Florida, more than 60 percent of voters indicated they would vote yes on the ballot measure, including more than 50 percent of Republicans, according to recent polling from the University of North Florida.
Democrats in the state are welcoming the decision on the ballot initiative and already looking to galvanize voters for November, especially as they seek to defeat Republican Sen. Rick Scott, who is running for a second term.
The 60 percent number is important, because Florida requires a 60 percent threshold to pass the amendment.
206 volunteers came out to knock on doors in 5 Florida counties on the Saturday before Easter, in a reverse weather weekend (it was hotter in Jacksonville than in Miami (Orlando was in between the two, naturally). But it was another beautiful day to canvass, and we started training at 10 AM (early compared to the other states). They knocked on 14,564 doors and talked to 1,117 voters. 700 of those voters answered questions on at least part of the Issues Survey.
Hope Springs from Field PAC started knocking on doors last week in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2024 Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are talking to Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up), GOTV and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization2024
Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do.
The Top 3 concerns of the voters we talked to last Saturday were, first, Issues surrounding Housing. Voters expressed concern about rising Insurance Costs, the Availability of Housing on the Markets and the fact that Interest Rates didn’t fall as they anticipated. Political Stability, more local than national, it appears, was the second “urgent” concern. Prices, generally Food Costs was the third most cited concern.
Biden Approval among the Floridians we talked to was 44% last Saturday; 9% expressed some measure of Disapproval. 9% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Rick Scott was doing while 44% expressed Disapproval. This is relatively unchanged from last year. 7% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. DeSantis was doing a good job, 38% said they disapproved of the job he was doing.
77 Florida voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along. For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the Constituent Service Request forms and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.
Most of the neighborhoods where we are knocking on doors in Florida right now are minority (non-white) and we endeavor to send out as many minority volunteers as possible. Some of our volunteers have expressed surprise that we have been successful in finding abortion single issue voters in these minority neighborhoods. But this reflects national trends.
The KFF poll, conducted in late February, suggests that the end of Roe created a new class of energized abortion-rights voters.
About 12 percent of participants said abortion would be the “most important issue” to their vote in the 2024 election. That includes 28 percent of Black women, 22 percent of Democrats, 19 percent of women in states where abortion is banned and 17 percent of women of reproductive age (18-49). Of the voters who said abortion was the most important issue, two-thirds said it should be legal in all or most circumstances.
“The findings signal a significant shift from previous election years, when white, conservative evangelicals were more likely to peg abortion as their biggest priority when voting.”
Florida isn’t considered one of the top presidential battleground states this fall, but it does have a Senate race and a handful of congressional races that could become competitive. And it will give Democrats nationally a chance to elevate an issue where they have a political advantage over Republicans, who have hoped to keep the public focused on the economy, immigration and President Biden’s general fitness for office.
Although we have only had 23,851 Floridians identify themselves as Reproductive Freedom single issue voters so far, we seem to be finding a lot more each week this year than before. Doesn’t hurt the state Supreme Court case has been in the news a lot here, but the Alabama IVF ruling has helped push it forward in voter’s minds, as well.
But this seems to be a factor in the Biden campaign’s push to flip Florida in November.
The very first question on the Issues Surveys is whether the person we are talking to is registered to vote at their current home address. We also ask if there is anyone living there who needs to be registered as well. In Florida, given the current laws, we offer up a tablet with the Secretary of State website up so that voters can register or update their information themselves. Part of this is making sure that voters are registered in compliance to the new, confusing and frustrating Election law that is particularly onerous for people who change residences more frequently than normal. But registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is also critical to our approach. Arizona has a much more friendly voter registration system, including the ability to opt in to permanent early voting. Of course, canvassing is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.
In Florida, though, the new law requires voters to provide, in addition to their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number OR their driver license OR state ID card number to make an address change. Which is par for the course this year, but here’s the part that is likely to stump people who move around. You have to remember which one you provided, because you have to provide the same one every single time you interact with your local Supervisor of Elections, or your request won’t be granted. Supervisors of Elections won’t have access to other databases, so they can only "verify” a request by the information the voter has provided. But this is something we have learned to track so that if the voter registration was not successful, we can go back.
We registered 3 new voters and got 27 voters to update their voter registration addresses in Florida on Saturday. We use the Secretary of State website to register voters in Florida, in order to meet Florida’s difficult restrictions there.
We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters. At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand. The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.
But the main focus of our canvassing is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary. Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican. (We also make Issues Surveys, Incident Reports and Constituent Service Request forms available at the churches we visit, but we don’t include numbers for those, in part because we don’t always get counts back, but also because we like to compare like to like.)
Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022). There is a lot of work to be done! Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with some really, really onerous new voter regulations, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.
We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File. Several of our Arizona organizers are also talking to Native American groups about replicating our Voter Matching service that Hope Springs provides for Black Churches. It’s a big year. There’s lots to be done, and, hopefully, we won’t have to suspect in-person voter contact because of a heatwave this year.
Our biggest expense is the Voter File. But it is also a fixed cost. That won’t change as we raise and spend more money. Printing literature is our second largest cost. Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.
Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation. We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change. We spent less than $70,000 last year because we raised less than $70,000. But what we have raised is thanks to you!
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization2024
If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!