The Teapublican efforts at blocking the vote and the consequences if it succeeds have finally moved me to stop lurking and write. I have organized a GOTV effort that I would like to see copied. I call it "Neighbors calling Neighbors."
I got a CD from the Board of Elections of all registered voters and the last ten times they voted. I divided my precinct into blocks and printed out a list of all addresses in that block with a registered voter, the names and voting records of each of those registered voters. I made a folder for each block with the list, some Voter Registration forms, and my card (which I had printed up with my self appointed title of Precinct Organizer.)
Then I printed out a list of faithful democrats (people who when they voted in a primary election always took a Democratic ballot and who voted every year.) This was my hunting list. I went to them and asked them to be a Block Captain. The key was to make the Block Captain's duties as light as possible and to go to people who understood the importance of voting.
The Block Captain is asked only to visit each house on his/her block, check that those on the list haven't moved or died since the list was made, register any unregistered voters, and (most important) get a current phone number.
I pick up the corrected lists and take any new registrations to the Board of Elections. I correct my master list for the precinct and then print out a phone list for each Block Captain. When early voting starts the Block Captains call their neighbors, tell them the hours and location for early voting, ask them if they need a ride, and urge them to vote early.
At the end of the week I collect the names of those in my precinct who have voted, contact my Block Captains and tell them to mark them as having voted and call those who haven't and urge them again. This continues until early voting ends. The weekend before election day another call is made reminding those who haven't voted that election day is their last chance.
On election day I will strike the polls for my precinct at 11:00 and 4:00, tell my Block Captains who has voted, and ask them to make two more calls to get people to the polls. More on my experiences and reasoning after the elegant apostrophe.
My hope is two-fold. One is that when it is your neighbor calling you urging you to vote, you are a lot more likely to do it than if it is some stranger. It also will seem less an imposition and an importuning since your neighbor talked to you earlier.
The second hope is that the tasks assigned are light enough that Block Captains would be willing to do it next year as well. I would like to get a continuing organization set up that will avoid disasters like 2010.
I had intended to wait to see how well this worked before writing about it since, while it sounds good in theory, it has not been tested. As I indicated, however, I have come to the conclusion that this election is too important and the threat of voter disenfranchisement is too great to wait.
I have to say that my efforts in recruiting Block Captains have been mixed. Interestingly it is the more affluent areas of the precinct where I am most likely to get a refusal. The ones with a manicured lawn are far too busy. On the other hand I was having trouble contacting one lady until a neighbor told me she was only off work on Tuesdays. When I showed up on a Tuesday morning she immediately agreed to help. But she worried that she wouldn't be able to call people at a time they would be home because of her work schedule. I assured her that I would find someone to do the calling if she would make the contacts and get the phone numbers.
There were 66 blocks in my precinct and only 115 faithful democrats (most of whom were husband and wife and hence really a single prospect.) The faithful Democrats also didn't spread themselves out evenly but showed a tendency to clump together. Fortunately I was able to convince some to become Block Captains for adjacent blocks. At this point I have been able to recruit Block Captains to cover about half the registered voters in my precinct. I am continuing to try to expand that coverage by recruiting less likely prospects.
One thing I noticed when I printed out the voting records was that there seemed to be a lot of registered voters who had never voted. I became curious enough to run a statistic on it. Shockingly more than one quarter of the registered voters in my city have never voted. Fully 26.4% of registered voters in my city have never voted. We have done a decent job of registering people but a piss-poor job of getting them out to vote. That certainly confirms my belief that we need to change our way of getting out the vote.
Clearly I have an advantage since I'm retired and have the time and health to do this. Surely there are others who are in my situation who could do something similar or a group of friends who could divide up the chores and do something similar in their precinct. We need to meet the Teapubilcans efforts to use voting restrictions to ensure that only the "right" people get to vote.