We’ve been canvassing in the Albany-Columbus-Macon triangle for seven weeks. This week, we had almost half of the number of volunteers we had last week. Albany State had their commencement on Saturday and Fort Valley State University has finals this week. So our canvass was much smaller, and in fewer counties, than prior weeks. Still, 158 volunteers came out to knock on doors in 4 counties in the the Black Belt of Georgia. “Don’t worry, more will show up after finals,” one organizer promised.
Having said that, the energy from even those who were committed elsewhere was palpable. “I wish I could come because it seems like this election just got real,” one volunteer emailed. And that it has.
Still, the work must go on — and everyone is grateful for the amount of work our organizers and volunteers from Albany State University and Ft Valley State have done in the last 18 months. Our first, and most important, question to voters is still “Are you registered to vote at your current address?” A big part of this effort is not only to make sure that the people we talk to are registered to vote, but registered to vote at their current address (as required by HAVA). But then we also want make sure that voters have a photo ID, as required by the new Georgia voter laws.
Our major focus has been the Issues Survey. Normally, around 65% of the voters we talk to at their doors answer some or all of these questions. Experienced volunteers, like those in Georgia, can get through this questionnaire quickly because we train them to, at the first hint of a pause, to respond, “this isn’t a test, shall we move on?” Granted, some voters want to think about how to respond, but most voters are grateful that we aren’t pushing them for an answer. We are looking for visceral responses, things they will consider when they cast their vote. And that isn’t a time for deep thinking.
Each week, we ask voters about what issue they think is the most urgent facing America right now. Inflation was, once again, the top Issue mentioned when we asked, “What Issue do you believe is most Urgent at this time.” Education was second and crime was the third most mentioned issue.
But the question this week is whether abortion or Reproductive Rights as a political issue breaks through the dominant topics that voters have expressed as their reasons or factors in for how they will vote in November. Of course, the midterm elections are 180 days away and there are lots of things that will happen between now and then that could change the course of the electoral outcome, including the actual ruling on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health.
And, in Georgia, the topic did come up. Sometimes, it was in conversation between voter and volunteer. Occasionally, a volunteer would write up an Observation Form or a Q(uestion) Slip after talking to a voter. Or it was the subject of the voter’s response to the query, “If you could send one message to your Member of Congress.”
Volunteers working with Hope Springs from Field PAC talk to voters with multiple goals based upon listening to voters at their doors and using prompts to focus the conversation in a meaningful way. Our major focus has been the Issues Survey. Normally, about 65% of the voters we talk to at their doors answer some or all of these questions. A lot of the people we talk to are eager to convey their opinions and concerns and asking for their opinion reinforces the theme that Democrats care about them.
Because we know that this election will be close and winning is achieved at the margins. The first step is to remind voters that there is something at stake in 2022.
While our goal is to re-elect Senator Warnock, 2022 is (as was expected) a “target rich environment,” as some like to say. In the Black Belt, you have Senator Warnock running for re-election, Stacey Abrams running in her historic bid to become Georgia’s governor and Ketanji Brown Jackson’s ascension to the Supreme Court bench in October. And that was before the leak from the Supreme Court. There is something for Democratic voters to vote for and we are reminding them of that fact. It is no time to be complacent.
Voter views of President Biden continue to fall from its high during the time of the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing. 64% of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in Florida on Saturday. 11% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. We continue to get feedback from voters that they wished Biden could do more about inflation and other issues. And we continue to hear comments or get questions about what happened to the loans President Biden offered to Black farmers (this is a rural area and we even had an African-American farmer offer us the use of his drone during the Senate Runoff last year).
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been 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, and, in March, we will begin an even bigger effort. 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, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. But the reason we won the Iowa Caucus in 2008 was because we registered voters and then turned them out! 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 — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans did). 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.
Georgia continues to stand apart from the other Senate Swing States where we are knocking on doors. Not only do we have more volunteers come out on Saturdays, but they are knocking on more doors (yes, these things are related) by a significant amount. And we have volunteers here asking for bigger turfs.
78% of the voters we talked to approved of the job Rev Warnock was doing in the Senate. Only 7% expressed disapproval. We knock on doors of Democrats and Independents, and not all five counties we canvassed on Saturday were predominantly Democratic. We don’t knock on doors of Republican households (although we do knock on the doors of mixed households).
Governor Kemp did not fare so well. 19% of the voters we talked to approved of the governor’s work, while 48% disapproved. In Georgia, we are also asking voters what they think of Stacey Abrams (since she is unopposed) and 66% expressed approval; 6% said they disapproved. We enter all this data we collect into VAN, the shared Democratic database, which is made available to all Democratic candidates who use it after the primaries.
Hope Springs has 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. As not every state has completed their re-maps (hello, Florida!), re-districting hasn’t yet made those opportunities/needs apparent. The Senate map started out clear. That may be changing. There are places we need to defend (Georgia, Nevada and Arizona) and there are opportunities. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are such opportunities. There is a lot of work to be done!
We specifically ask voters if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections. Last year, we walked with lit about the changes in voting laws in Georgia, but we also asked voters about their fears and experience in prior elections. Voters who say they have experience voter intimidation or other problems with voting are asked to fill out Incident Reports. We found 11 voters who wanted to fill out Incident Reports in Georgia on Saturday. We collate these Incident Reports, to be shared with local, state and federal officials in charge of voting, as well as use them to plan out our Election Protection strategy in the fall. They could also be used in court cases.
Like last summer and fall, we have been asking voters if they have any local infrastructure issues they would tell elected officials about. In Georgia, we have consistently found people who wanted to fill out Constituent Service Request forms. 49 voters raised some area that they wanted addressed. We pass these along to the relevant local official for the request.
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. Far and away the number one issue that the voters we talked to in the Senate Swing States last year was inflation or price increases, and I imagine that concern has only increased.
But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. We find that most voters who aren’t in a hurry or in the middle of something are willing to answer at least a couple of these questions, especially their top issue or concern and their views of President Biden. 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.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has a hybrid approach. We aren’t interested in competing with regular campaign field organizing. We are in the field before they get there and then move on when the Democratic campaigns start their intensive field work. Indeed, when we wind up the typical field work by Labor Day, we will encourage all the volunteers working with us to move over to the Senate campaigns in their states (and hope that our field organizers will be hired on by those campaigns). After Labor Day, we will begin organizing our Election Protection Project.
But we are also cognizant that Democratic turnout has traditionally dropped off more than Republicans in non-presidential years. So early, frequent voter contact is more important to our side. Equally important, though, is that starting early means that we can make up for our inability to register new voters in the presidential election because we took Covid and the health of our base seriously. Registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door 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.
As you can see from the very first question in the Issues Questionnaire, making sure that voters are registered from their current address is a major function of early canvassing. 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 poor, or African-America, or change residences more frequently than normal.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them. There’s a lot of work to be done, but fortunately, the three states that are making it most difficult are also states in which you can knock on doors at least 10 months out of the year. And, with your help, we will be there, getting our people to super-comply with these restrictive provisions.
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/hopemobilization
Thank you for your support.