On Saturday, Hope Springs from Field PAC canvassed in three states: Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, we began what we hope to be a year long effort to identify marginal Democrats and Independents who vote Democratic, make up for the voters we probably would have registered before Covid-19 struck in 2020, increase voter awareness of the new rules to vote and the fact that Democrats are fighting to protect their right to vote.
We are targeting states that have competitive Senate races in 2022 as well as districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year. Because states have not received the final numbers, re-districting hasn’t yet made those opportunities/needs apparent. The Senate map is clear. There are places we need to defend (Georgia and Arizona) and there are opportunities. Wisconsin is one such opportunity.
But where we are canvassing now is dependent upon the presence of Obama field alums who are taking on the responsibility for cutting turf, training volunteers and sending them out with lit. So while Georgia and Arizona are, by consensus, the two Senate seats where we are most vulnerable, we aren’t doing anything in Arizona (yet) because we don’t have sufficient funding at this point. Field has always been the underfunded aspect (some times, the neglected step-child) of political campaigns but the Obama presidential campaign began with an agreement from the top that small dollar contributions would be directed towards field (minus fund raising costs, of course).
To complete this thought, the current effort Hope Springs from Field PAC is engaged in, which we have been calling Voter Protection canvassing (but is much broader than that), is envisioned as a year-long effort focused on registering voters at their current addresses (HAVA law), making sure that registered voters know what they need to do to vote next year, gain information on voter experience with intimidation or hassles at the polls, update VAN, and increase voter trust and support of the Democratic party. In many of these Senate states, we will be canvassing every weekend possible, where weather is not a factor. (Heat is not considered a factor.) But these specific types of canvasses, designed to raise awareness of voter rights and compliance and to leave a positive impression that Democrats Care!, will end by Labor Day of 2022. We hope that any organizers we do hire can move over to the main campaigns by that point.
In Georgia, we discovered this model by accident. We were getting new data and inputting it into VAN so that other Democrats could access it, but we found that the other campaigns became more aware (and, thus, most likely to use) that open-source information about voters if they folded organizers we brought into the state into their operations (thus hiring them “away” from us). Which, in hindsight, made sense, given the Covid-19 related “rule” that Georgia officials only wanted to hire people already in the state. (Hope Springs from Field PAC continued to pay their health insurance, though.)
So, at the beginning of this effort, we are relying on old-school, experienced organizers and the existing contacts that Obama alums have with volunteers and other local organizations who are interested in voter contact and protection until we have built up sufficient resources to hire organizers. In Wisconsin, we have a pretty big list of Wisconsin volunteers from the presidentials as well as two groups who are very interested in this specific approach we are pursuing. Two groups meant we basically sent out two different kinds of canvasses.
In the first, in conjunction with Wisconsin Interfaith Voter Engagement Campaign but primarily Milwaukee-based A.M.E. churches, we merged their membership lists with VAN to canvass in the city. There were several reasons for this. First, the churches were eager to touch base with their members (Covid had shut down worship services) but we all understood that merging their membership with VAN allowed us to go to homes of people who were not registered to vote. 91 members of these A.M.E. churches were not on the voter rolls in the turf we walked, but we had anticipated that there were more eligible, unregistered potential voters as well. 36 volunteers from this interfaith coalition joined another 21 volunteers from our old Obama-Dean lists to walk in Milwaukee.
The second group of 26 volunteers went to the suburban cities of Waukesha, Elm Grove and the village of Bayside. One organizer called these the Black and White teams, although both groups had diverse groups of volunteers. They walked with Issues Surveys and Constituent Service Requests Forms, and the Milwaukee group added a Voter Protection question with the Issues Survey.
Hope Springs from Field PAC is knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to increase awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights. We are thinking how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/voterprotection
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. The approach we adopted was focused on listening, on connecting voters and their story to the candidate. Repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors. We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters).
These two groups knocked on 5,063 doors last weekend. 582 doors opened to our volunteers and allowed us to register 69 people (about half of which were young people). 16 people updated their addresses. Although two of our volunteers were special registration deputies, we followed the rule set for registering voters without SRDs. That’s what the printers are for! Canvassing with mobile printers allowed us to collect the required forms of proof of residence at their door, in their presence which were sealed in an envelope at the time.
Almost 500 people filled out the Issues Survey, and in multiple homes we canvassed, more than one voter at the door did so. 89 Constituent Requests were completed, more in the suburbs (where we knocked on fewer doors) than in Milwaukee itself. That seems notable, but I don’t have enough information to draw any conclusions from it.
Most people we talked to were more aware of the fact that they had a governor’s race on the ballot next year than a U.S. Senate race. Ron Johnson was not too popular at these doors, even in the suburban areas. You are probably aware that Johnson has yet to decide if he is running for re-election in 2022 and that he’s not polling that well in the state. But we were not knocking on doors where he would have expected to be strong (although, if he did run for re-election, he would need to do well in the WOW counties). And the biggest question/message to elected officials was impatience: when are they going to do a variety of things they were seeing on the news.
While I have personally never been involved in an “interfaith” canvassing operation, the data they brought to this mix allowed us to register more people than I’ve experienced before. The ability to say, we know there are people in this house who are not registered to vote, was very helpful. And coming from someone with whom they shared something significant (such as a denomination) had to make that easier. While those people we registered who were members of one of these churches will be assigned mentors from their church, 14 of the new people we registered will need mentors. There is a lot of work to be done before 2022! We are just getting started.
If you support grassroots efforts to protect the vote and our voters, especially in minority communities, please contribute (if you are able):
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/voterprotection