Primaries are over now in Virginia. Hope Springs from Field PAC took a break from knocking on doors there because our volunteers wanted to help out their favorite candidate’s campaigns. Even before Election Day, though, i got a few emails asking when we’d be starting up again. Some of the primary winners will continue to canvass, and we’ll stop if asked by those campaigns in fear of competing for volunteers. But our scheduled ending date for knocking on doors in this kind of preliminary (or first rounds) type of canvassing remains Labor Day 2023, when we will shift gears, especially in terms of protracted reach-outs to newly registered voters.
In North Carolina, some of our volunteers are fully committed to changing the equation that will, as one of our volunteers says, “f*ck up those bastards’ efforts to rig the vote.” And this from one of our LVW volunteers. People are getting tired of being jerked around and just want a fair fight. We are meeting a lot of North Carolinians who just don’t trust their state legislators. We have volunteers who still remember the voter fraud case against Leslie McCrae Dowless and wonder why Republicans don’t focus on that. Power corrupts and all that.
But this is exactly the kind of thing that has excited our volunteers there. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Georgia ‘super volunteers’ had come to North Carolina to help us organize Black congregations and talk about our efforts to get voters photo id’s at their Elections offices. Their new voter photo ID laws are similar, so when the state Supreme Court overturned its own ruling, volunteers in North Carolina were ready to go. We also have several North Carolina volunteers who are following potential Congressional re-districting (although the new Supreme Court ruling may help us out there). I won’t say our volunteers are paranoid, but they are very aware of the circumstances in which we are working.
So far, we have found 638 voters at the doors who told us they need the necessary photo IDs at their doors. As of yet, i have no reports of how many voters who need them from the Black Churches. But it was only last month where we sent back congregation membership lists we matched with VAN so they would know which voters weren’t registered at the same address or how might be possible to newly register. We are working to confirm that county Board of Elections have the supplies needed to provide these photo IDs before scheduling Voter ID days at their offices and several boards have reached out to southern Georgia Registrar’s offices to get their own understanding of how many people will show up at these events. The last thing anyone wants is for their offices to not have sufficient supplies on hand. Women continue to comprise a slightly higher percentage in our North Carolina requests for photo IDs than Georgia (so far).
Thus Hope Springs from Field has expanded our door to door efforts in North Carolina, even as we continue our focus on NC-01, NC-06, NC-13 and NC-14 in an effort to protect those seats.
342 volunteers knocked on doors in 14 canvasses in eight North Carolina counties last Saturday. This was a slight drop-off from the week before. They knocked on 25,513 doors but they talked to 2000 voters (an increase of 145 voters from the prior week!). 1228 (an increase of 108!) of these voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey. So despite having 16 fewer volunteers didn’t hurt so much!
The Top 3 Issues canvassers found in North Carolina were first, Reproductive Healthcare. We had voters talking about their daughters, but we also had voters questioning whether the colleges and universities in the state could continue to attract “exceptional students from outside the state.” Another male voter talked about whether teaching hospitals in the state were going to be effected. Concerns over Economic Uncertainty was second. Questions over New Laws was third with Trump and his Indictment closely following behind. The Research Triangle bares little resemblance to the North Carolina of old.
Biden’s Approval number among the Democratic and unaffiliated voters we talked to was 52%; remember, try to weed out Republican households in our walk lists, so these numbers basically don’t include any Republicans. Disapproval was 9%. We also continue to find more than 40% of the voters we talk to on Saturdays have no idea who their senators were or had any kind of impression of them (while we are asking about voter approval of senators not on the ballot, we aren’t really tracking these numbers).
54% of the voters we talked to on Saturday approved of the job Governor Roy Cooper is doing; 11% expressed disapproval.
Volunteers registered 12 new voters and re-registered 61 voters to comply with the HAVA laws. 68 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. These are passed along to Democratic office holders, when possible, but to the appropriate office, if not we get them to the appropriate office holder. 2 voters completed an Incident Report detailing what they could remember from an incident they witnessed of voter intimidation or suppression. We follow these up to fill in whatever blanks voters leave in the report.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since March in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2024 Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are canvassing Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.
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/fistfulofsteel
Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal for what we are doing.
We had started knocking in Virginia on April 15th in support of Democrats in highly competitive (or expected to be) state Senate and House districts. The 2023 legislative elections will be their first after redistricting and a lot of lines got moved in the remap. We are especially canvassing in the new areas for the targeted districts.
Like Ohio last summer, we have had to import organizers for many of these districts. I’ve served as lead organizer for 2 of these, driving more than 3 ½ hours from Arlington VA to meet with volunteers in our targeted areas. I am not alone here. Strangely, we have no problem finding organizers for our Northern Virginia canvasses.
201 volunteers came up to knock on doors in Virginia last week. They knocked on 13,547 doors and talked to 1010 voters. 582 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey.
The Top Issue volunteers found in Virginia was the Jobs. The second most frequent concern was Schools and this covered all kinds of things. Changes in curriculum, property taxes, etc. Third were Reproductive Healthcare.
In Virginia, 50% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing; 7% Disapproved. 63% approved of the job Senator Kaine was doing while 3% disapproved. 12% approved of the job that Governor Youngkin was doing. 31% disapproved of Youngkin’s performance. In Virginia, governors can’t run for re-election, which is why he’s been sniffing around the presidential race. Voters continue to bring that up.
Volunteers registered 2 new voters and re-registered 15 voters. We differentiate between the two because brand new voters are often ignored by campaigns and we hope to compensate for that somewhat by having volunteers send them post cards before the election and they are also getting robocalls thanking them for registering. But registering voters is a primary rationale behind early canvassing, and turning out voters, especially those that have just been registered is a core mission for Hope Springs from Field. Just wanted to point that out.
28 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. In general, we send these to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along. For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the CSR and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.
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.
But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. 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.
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.
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/fistfulofsteel
Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!