Call to action for all bipeds with an interest in the election 6 weeks away!:
Per great posts about canvassing from 538 on Monday and the Sac Bee today,
Face-to-face contact ("Canvassing") is the single most important effort a volunteer can contribute to his or her candidate.
Please join me below the fold for meaty details about how & why you, Yes, YOU can make the difference between a President Obama & a President Palin.
From the story on fivethirtyeight.com
For every twelve voters who you talk to at their doors, one voter goes and votes who would not otherwise have voted. If you're asking: "how can I be most effective in helping my candidate win the election?" then an organizer's answer is going to be: knock on doors.
From the Sacramento Bee (sacbee.com)
In Sacramento, two weekends before the February primary election, groups of youths, including a girls' basketball team, visited 2,807 addresses, and spoke with 732 registered voters. The youths reminded the adults to vote, and gave them cards with the addresses of where to go on election day.
After the election, researchers at Yale University and California State University of the East Bay compared who voted in canvassed areas against a control group that was not canvassed. Researchers found the voter drive increased turnout by nearly 15 percent.
Here is a link to the PDF of the Yale study cited by both articles.
From someone who has knocked on literally thousands of doors over the past decade in support of candidates and causes, let me tell you this:
Canvassing is fun.
Canvassing is not as hard as you think.
*There is no more rewarding feeling than when you connect with someone who would have not otherwise been contacted.
*Canvassing is free. (In fact, if you are as broke as I am, you can sign up here to attempt to receive [or, if you would rather, give] sponsorship)
There are other "fringe benefits" too.
Canvassing is good exercise.
*Canvassing precludes the need to sit at home worrying.
*You are guaranteed to have a laugh or two while on turf.
*You will meet fellow canvassers who are also cool people, maybe even (almost) as cool as you!
Many (O.K., most) people have an innate fear/loathing of reaching out in this door-to-door fashion. I implore you to overcome this aversion. Perhaps you believe contacting voters actually Dissuades them to support your candidate (I heard this from numerous folks at the CA Obama HQ!) Rest assured the data and research most thoroughly disproves this hypothesis. Anyone with such capricious voting trends is an aberration.
If you are here at the dKos (and not a troll), you have a vested interest in winning in November. Please do not rest on your laurels or rely on the polls. We have an unprecedented election on our hands. There is truly no "safe" lead in the polls. The 800-pound gorilla no one here seems to want to talk about is the Bradley effect. It's the "Uncle Bob" who was convicted of a sex crime that no one dare mention. But we cannot lose sight of the importance of amassing a large lead in the polls, especially in the swing states, before election day.
Even for a white candidate like John Kerry, a lead in the polls was misleading (excuse the pun). If you have time to re-live the bitter defeat, perhaps you need to endure the atypically plodding new film by Michael Moore, "Slacker Uprising" (Not my cup of tea. But the price [free] is right).
The biggest push of all is currently taking place in the 2 large towns, Vegas & Reno, that border the nation's largest state. Since today Nate upgraded California to a 99% chance of Obama carrying its EVs, let any and all of us in the Golden State consider taking a trip east ASAP.
HERE is where you sign up.
It's fast, easy, free, painless, etc.
If you live in or near one of a dozen or so other swing states, your job might be even easier than carpooling 3-5 hours to contact voters in person. Simply visit this page on myBO and click away for details on how you can start making a difference today.
http://my.barackobama.com/...
There are also ways to help if you are disabled, elderly, or otherwise challenged. Please contact your local office (linked above) to see what else (data entry, phone-banking, etc.) they need volunteers to assist with right away. Trust me, there is a huge demand and they will put you to work right away.
And for those of you hypocrite police out there, Yes, I do grasp the irony of a diary about not blogging/writing diaries as I am doing that very thing right now. However, for the past several weeks, I find it unlikely that many of you have spent more time working on the issue of canvassing in swing states than myself (See my previous 2 diaries). But thanks in advance for trying to keep me honest.
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Alternate titles:
Less hand-wringing, more doorbell dinging
Knock, knock. Who's there? YOU!
Yes we can! But only if we try!
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Thanks for reading. Now let's get BIZ-ZAY!