Our original plan was to forego canvassing on Labor Day weekend. Our efforts on the Saturday before Memorial Day, and even the Saturday before Easter and Palm Sunday saw significant lower turnouts among volunteers. But sometime after the Dobbs decision was made public, volunteers started to ask organizers, “are we canvassing on Labor Day?”
Understand that a majority of our organizers (basically, anyone who wanted a campaign job) have already moved on to formal campaign employment. As it should be (this has always been the goal, from day one in Georgia) and it helps senate campaigns and coordinated campaigns understand the data we’ve entered into VAN. Other organizers have returned to their colleges, and, yet, people came out. The volunteers were right.
Trumpie Republicans were present at what the GOP Secretary of State’s office called an "alleged unauthorized access" of election equipment, contaminating voting equipment and now a target of the state investigation. But Coffee County is one of those counties that Hope Springs from Field started canvassing in after the primaries, where we had established Voter Protection tables in front of precincts with historically high rates of election incidents, voter intimidation and suppression. Led by (another!) HBCU student who resides in the area, we not only found 8 voters who have been errantly removed from the voter file by the Republican SOS’s office, but 41 voters who needed Voter IDs in order to cast a legal ballot in 2022. Before our organized efforts to obtain Voter IDs there (with the partnership of 13 Black Churches in the county), voters had made 3 attempts to get them on their own (that we are aware of) — all of which failed. But scheduling an official Voter ID Day at the Voter Registrar’s office there, keeping them and local and state prosecutors aware of that effort, as well as ensuring that the SOS’s office had provided the card stock needed to issue them worked out. Knowing the law, knowing the players (in both the bureaucracy and the legal system), understanding the legitimate obstacles (local Registrar’s offices didn’t have the financial resources, let alone stock, to print these) and applying friendly outside pressure paid off.
We ask voters who opened their doors if they were registered to vote at their current address and if they have the required photo ID they need to cast their ballot. We remind Georgians just how important it is now to have a photo ID to vote and how we will help them get one, if needed.
We canvass with an Issues Questionnaire that allows voters to tell us what is on their minds. We use it as a conversational check to guide volunteers through their dialog at the door. It makes it easy on our volunteers as provides us with vital data that will be entered in VAN (the Democratic database).
Our major focus has been the Issues Survey. Normally, about 60-65% of the voters we talk to answer some or all of these questions. Each week, we ask voters about what issue they think is the most urgent facing America right now. This week, voters said Schools was their most pressing concern and funding for Public Schools was specifically mentioned. The Economy was the second concern. The Cost of Health Care/Health Insurance was the third most frequent response this week. Many of the counties where we are canvassing are rural and Farm Loans remains an issue.
Voter views of President Biden continue to improve but they are nowhere near that of Rev. Warnock. 66% of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in Florida on Saturday. 5% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. We continue to get feedback from voters that they wished Biden could do more about the price of gas, inflation and help with farm loans.
82% of the voters we talked to approved of the job Rev Warnock was doing in the Senate. 3% expressed disapproval this week. We knock on doors of Democrats and Independents, and not all nine 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 fared as expected. 13% of the voters we talked to approved of the governor’s work, while 51% disapproved. In Georgia, we are also asking voters what they think of Stacey Abrams and 65% expressed approval; 8% said they disapproved. We enter all this data we collect into VAN, the shared Democratic database, which is made available to Democratic candidates who use it after the primaries.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First Round of a traditional Five Round Canvass. 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/2022senateswing
Hope Springs from Field PAC understands that 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 dud). 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.
We registered 13 new voters and re-registered or corrected Voter Addresses for 88 voters last Saturday. It seems our organizers are in some sort of competition with what we are doing in North Carolina, and continue to push updating voter addresses and identifying who needs a Voter (photo) ID before Labor Day.
We also 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 6 voters who wanted to fill out Incident Reports in Georgia on Saturday — mostly in counties we had not started canvassing in until right before the primary. 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. 93 voters raised some area that they wanted addressed.
Constituent Service Requests are handed over to (hopefully Democratic) office holders with responsibilities for the area of the request. Q-slips will be sent directly to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. Comments from Observation Forms are entered into VAN, as well, and any questions we collect are forwarded to the appropriate campaigns (or elected officials). We are building a data goldmine that Democrats (who use VAN in November) can deploy for their own voter contact purposes.
Several professional fundraisers have told me my reports are too cheery, that if I want to raise money I need to be more scary. Maybe that is true, but Hope Springs from Field’s origins are more grassroots. If this work needs to be supported, then it will be funded. So if you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022senateswing
Thank you for your support! This work depends on you!