Since June 12th, Hope Springs from Field PAC has led canvassing in Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Not every state participated each week and we started off first with four states before growing into all six in July. This diary details the cumulative stats from those weekly canvasses. Or, as kids are asked when they return to school each year: How did you spend your summer (vacation). We knocked on doors!
And it is all thanks to you! While I don’t really track these numbers, I do know that more than a thousand, possibly thousands of DKos readers have contributed to this effort — and more than a few have given ideas that we incorporated into that effort. So while I am working on a thank you email to donors this weekend, I wanted to thank you, as well, in this summation of what we did with our summer. And while I write this, “Gonna Be Some Changes Made” by Bruce Hornsby plays in my iTunes. There are going to be some changes made!
We started the summer with 11 Obama field alum organizers and 3 Albany State University organizers with whom I had worked with during the 2021 Georgia Senate Runoffs. By the end of the summer, we had 21 Obama field alums, many of whom also cut turf, and 8 Albany State students who led canvasses in their home areas. In my initial diary I noted:
Each state has different current laws, and different laws that will impact 2022 coming down the pike. So while the local approach is different, the grand strategy is still the same. Make up for our absence in the 2020 ground game. Show the Dem flag (Democrats care!). Expose voters to the fact that Republicans are trying to keep them from voting. Demonstrate that Democrats want to help them vote, in the fashion they feel most comfortable — and to help them make their communities better. Ensure our voters that we are actively working to ensure their right to vote, and to protect their vote afterward.
We also started with a volunteer list of 19,475 names of people who had worked with us in the past and still had the email addresses or phone numbers from when they had been active. This is no minor detail. Contact lists are golden, especially of volunteers who had experience knocking on doors.
These 29 organizers mobilized a total of 2,980 volunteers who came out this summer. About half of those volunteers were People of Color (although very few were in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania). Many of these volunteers came out more than once (the closer the volunteer felt to the organizer, the more likely they volunteered for multiple weekends). We found 31 volunteers who actually came out by knocking on their doors, so the initial list grew. Campaigns find more volunteers by knocking on doors, but it is satisfying to look back on the summer’s effort and realize that we were attracting volunteers by our efforts.
We targeted 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 started out clear. They may be changing. There are places we need to defend (Georgia and Arizona) and there are opportunities. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin is one such opportunity.
They knocked on 203,804 doors, exceeding my initial goal of hitting 200,000 doors before Labor Day. We asked every single voter we talked to if they were registered at their current address and if they had the necessary ID needed to vote in 2022. Every single voter. The literature we walked with explained the new laws and how to comply with them. We call this super-compliance. We purchased 215,000 pieces of literature to leave at doors. Pieces were unique to each state, and purchased from (hopefully) union printers in their states. I note that we hopefully did this because our Texas printer, which we had used during the TX-06 special election said it was a union printer and delivered a bug. But it isn’t always that simple in the South.
This summer, volunteers led by Hope Springs from Field PAC talked to 24,248 voters. For the record, this is slightly more than 8 voters contacted per volunteer. As I mentioned yesterday, I try to shoot for 10 actual contacts per volunteer but it is what it is (10 is a target, 8 seems to be the norm over the years).
For most of the summer, we knocked on doors in masks and those who brought their vaccination card wore the button (in the end, in Wisconsin, everyone who walked had to be vaxxed per the request of the volunteers who had been coming out). Some people also wore disposable gloves and a couple of people wore face shields. Every week, people asked us about the button, and we definitely felt like voters were reassured by it. That is just where we are right now. Of course, we keep hoping that this won’t be necessary going forward, but you play the hand you are dealt.
Again, I want to thank you for your support which made it possible for our volunteers to walk with these buttons. Not only did volunteers like having them, but people asked about them every single weekend. You made that possible.
We have been walking with an Issues Canvass, where we ask voters what they think and whether they had a message for their elected officials. (We did not really start walking with the questionnaire until the fourth week and found it was incredibly popular.) 9,932 answered questions on the questionnaire, in whole or in part. Everyone who worked on the survey answered at least two questions, but more than half did the entire thing. It is going to be a lot of fun to enter all that data into VAN!
We walked with Incident Reports and collected 229 Incident Reports across the six states. We got just a handful in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Florida was the big “winner,” and Georgia (again) kicked above its weight. Not exactly something to be proud of but there you go. The voter intimidation and suppression incidents we found witnesses for were both black and brown. It won’t surprise anyone that we got very few in the suburban, largely white, precincts. We pass along Incident Reports to the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and NALEO (those that correspond to Hispanic precincts), and send copies to state Democratic Party committees. But our purpose is to combine this information with the two independent databases of voting incidents to look for patterns before the election and use that information for warning district, state and U.S. attorneys’ offices that we could see those patterns resurface on election day. As I said in an earlier diary:
Protecting the vote can be pro-active. Even with all the "new" tactics that Trump and his supporters brought out in 2020 (trying to overturn the Electoral College is definitely new!), most voter suppression tactics are old and occur in the same places. Even though the internet allows for greater distribution of knowledge about efforts to keep (largely) minorities from voting, the locations or targets of that activity tends to be the same locations year in and year out. So we know where we need to be connecting with voters who might have faced voter intimidation, suppression or even violence and where we can expect it to happen in future elections.
But the purpose of collecting Incident Reports is not just for the last election, but also for future elections. But OUR purpose on Saturday was as much for preventing future occurrences of voter intimidation and suppression as re-assuring voters in affected areas that Democrats had their backs. Historical patterns are an overwhelming predictor of future incidents.
Voter Suppression and Election Protection will be our central focus after Labor Day in 2022. The reason we organized as a federal PAC is so that we can get poll watcher credentials for November 2022. But after next Labor Day, we hope to hand off any field organizers we hire to Senate or other statewide campaigns, in part to help them understand the data we’ve collected and placed into VAN for their use. Laws pertaining to election protection changed in the rash of new election laws Republican legislatures passed this year and we would like to get ahead of that next year.
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 about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and 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/hopefield
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 and our cause. 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). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.
714 people filled out new voter registration forms for their states during the canvassing this summer. We relied on a number of tactics to push brand new voter registrations, depending upon the state. Our Georgia organizers and volunteers registered considerably more new voters in North Carolina than they had in their home state. Part of the reason was because of the Senate runoff, where interest was very high and it seems everyone got registered and voted. But it also spoke to the street cred, as it were, of these Georgia organizers and volunteers from the runoff experience (voting for Biden, too). The after Saturday dip on the chart are those 88 people who registered to vote on Sunday in North Carolina at the (black) churches our volunteers went to and (I think in every case) spoke.
We separated out how we count our voter registration numbers because we try to get mentors, someone who will stay in contact and help new voters navigate their first (presumably) election. We found 136 mentors, some of whom have taken responsibility for more than one new voter. Most of these game out of the Elections Committees in the Black Churches in their communities.
1,479 voters updated their address (as required by HAVA) during our summer canvass. In all, Hope Springs from Field PAC registered 2161 voters this summer.
As I mentioned above, we left lit that summarized the new elections laws in the six states.
We collected 827 Constituent Service Request Forms in total. In general, we sent these to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office was held by a Republican, we still sent it along. We encouraged Democratic office holders, though, to make immediate contact with the constituent requesting services and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder. And this effort will be even more valuable when we start canvassing with redistricting in mind. Helping Democratic officials reach their new constituents will help mitigate Republican efforts to draw them out of the legislatures.
The first thing we ask voters when they open the door is: "Are you registered to vote at your current address" and "Do you have the necessary photo ID in order to vote." This summer, we found 287 Georgians who did not have the needed identification. We have already scheduled events at county Registrar’s office in Dougherty and Houston counties and have another 13 coming up. 57 Georgians, overwhelmingly African-American, have gotten their Voter ID in those two counties. We will continue to ask voters we talk to if they have the necessary photo ID to vote in their state.
Members of the Divine Nine sororities and local Black Churches were central to this effort to build up support to help make it easy for those without the required ID to feel comfortable in getting them. As one Soro said, “We’re asking for them. They don’t need to ask for themselves. They just need to get in line.”
One of the first things I learned when I started doing this professionally was how central credit-taking is to winning campaigns since 1974. So that you for your support. The credit is due to you. And we want to acknowledge that. You make this work possible.
These canvasses are organized and led by (mostly) Obama field alums who have volunteered their time in their states to get this effort off the ground. Their work, knowledge and skill sets are invaluable. Many of them understood what happened in 2020, that “We did not have a sustained, all-in voter contact program in 2020. And the shock waves from the 2020 results are still reverberating. Even though Trump lost, the gains they made have lingered to support the pipe dream that Trump actually won. And Democrats lost a whole cycle's worth of field organizers who understand the interactive nature of both organic and targeted field work.”
Hope Springs from Field PAC is trying to reinstitute best field practices, such as canvassing with people who look like the voters we are talking to and targeting former voters thrown off the rolls. A lot of these got forgotten because of the Covid restrictions in the last cycle, and we have an entire cycle of campaign staffers who were trained without the benefit of actually getting to do field. That’s why it is so important to start knocking on doors now, and not wait until a month or so before the primaries. We have a lot of make-up work to do. Can you help?
Our main expenses (right now) are typical canvassing materials (water, snacks, walk packets, lit, buttons and access to VAN) as well as the mobile “copy machines”/printers (in quotes because the DKos community suggested it was a better ) we are purchasing to comply with the voter ID requirements in several states. The 6,810 robocalls cost less than one cent a call. At this time, all the money we raise is devoted to this. This is about to change. But this summer, we relied upon the Obama alumni network for organizers and cutting turf. We need to bring in other field organizers as we are able, especially since many of the people who were cutting turf now will want to devote more of their volunteer time to the candidates and causes they support.
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 donate:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopefield
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!