Back in June 12th, 2021, Hope Springs from Field PAC began canvassing in the Black Belt of Georgia, repeating our steps in the Georgia Senate Runoff, with a special emphasis on helping voters without the newly required photo IDs to obtain them. But this year, we are having to expand this effort into North Carolina because the (state) Supreme Court reversed itself on North Carolina’s photo ID decision.
It is well established that Voter Suppression is historical and closely related to local conditions. Those conditions are highly resistant to change, even as states like North Carolina, Georgia and Florida grow because of higher birth rates among minority populations and/or people move in from states outside the old Confederate south.
LSU professor (and now RAND consultant) Jhacova Williams did seminal work on this, showing a consistent connection between past lynchings and lower voter registration among Black people in the journal the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. “Black Americans who reside in counties in the South where there was a higher number of lynchings from 1882 to 1930 have lower voter registration today” concludes the RAND press release that also announces Williams joined the RAND Corp. The paper is called “Historical Lynchings and Contemporary Voting Behavior of Blacks” and can be found easily if you Google it.
This kind of Voter Suppression was further exacerbated by the North Carolina Supreme Court’s reversal of its previous ruling on Holmes v. Moore. The Holmes v. Moore ruling means that North Carolina county boards of elections will now be issuing voter photo id’s (just like in Georgia): “The county board of elections shall, in accordance with this section, issue without charge voter photo identification cards upon request to registered voters.”
But this fits right into the wheelhouse of Hope Springs from Field PAC. For the last two years, we have been organizing Voter ID days at Georgia county Registrar’s Offices, where voters could obtain a free Voter ID without the wait or intrusive questions they would receive at a Driver’s License office. The latter was important to those registered voters who need a photo ID, often because they never had a need for a Driver’s License.
In Georgia, we conducted 56 Voter ID days from June 12th, 2021 to October 2022 and helped 18,478 voters get the photo ID cards they needed to vote. For the most part, we knew who these voters were, especially those who were mobilized through the Black Churches. While 18,478 voters got their photo IDs according to the Registrar’s offices in 21 counties, we came away with a list of 13,168 names that we could match to voter history after the November 2022 election. Just to be clear, our efforts amounted to 13,168 voters who turned out to vote in November, voters who would otherwise have been turned away.
We endeavor to do the same in North Carolina. And it is important to realize that these 18,478 voters were in the Black Belt of Georgia, not the metro Atlanta area where there are far more people. 63% of those Georgia voters were women. In North Carolina, where we have been canvassing since April 15th, we have already found 361 voters at the doors who told us they needed the necessary photo IDs. 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 comprise a slightly higher percentage in our North Carolina requests for photo IDs than Georgia (so far).
So we have had to really step up our efforts in North Carolina this year. Between helping (especially minority and older) voters get photo IDs, we are trying to pre-mitigate efforts in the state to use an expected re-map to take away Democratic seats in Congress. North Carolina’s Congressional delegation is currently split 7-7 but the state Supreme Court overturned prior court rulings on April 27th that could dramatically effect fair elections in general and the composition of the state’s Congressional delegation. Republicans hope that these rulings will lead to 11 Republican-leaning districts and three Democratic-leaning ones, a significant boost for Republicans’ hopes of keeping the U.S. House in 2024.
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.
252 volunteers knocked on doors in 9 canvasses in eight North Carolina counties last Saturday. They knocked on 17,841 doors and talked to 1,401 voters. 851 of these voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey.
The Top 3 Issues canvassers found in North Carolina were first, Economic Uncertainty, secondly Gas Prices and third, Jobs.
Biden’s Approval number among the Democratic and unaffiliated voters we talked to was 56%; remember, we don’t include Republican households in our walk lists (which our volunteers really, really appreciate). Disapproval was 6%. More than 40% of the voters we talked to on Saturday had 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).
55% of the voters we talked to on Saturday approved of the job Governor Roy Cooper is doing; 8% expressed disapproval.
Volunteers registered 7 new voters and re-registered 56 voters to comply with the HAVA laws. 88 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 2 voters completed an Incident Report. 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.
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/hopevoterprotect
Hope Springs from Field PAC 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 of what we do.
We continue to knock on doors in the Black Belt in Georgia and the suburbs of Atlanta. 297 volunteers came out to knock on doors in Georgia last week. They knocked on 17,841 doors and talked to 1,401 voters. 852 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey.
The Top Issues volunteers found in Georgia was concerns over efforts to raise the Costs of Housing. The second most frequent concern was Recession Worries and third were Summer Concerns. 56% of our responses were from the northern suburbs, as we have expanding the number of canvasses and volunteers in the metro region.
Biden’s Approval numbers among the Georgians we talked to was at 58% last Saturday, with a Disapproval number of 8%. In comparison, Approval of Governor Kemp was 41% and Disapproval was 37% last Saturday. There is no senate race in Georgia this cycle (and a number of Georgia voters have told us “Thank God” there isn’t because they are exhausted!) and while we ask if voters approve of the job their senators are doing, we are not tracking that.
Volunteers registered 8 new voters and re-registered 43 voters. 68 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 5 voters completed an Incident Report. Two other voters expressed concerns about the 2024 elections but did not fill out incident reports because they didn’t say they witnessed voter suppression or intimidation (they just expressed concerns or worries about them).
We continue to find voters who say they need a photo id (which is surprising since that was required to vote in the 2022 elections) — even in the Atlanta suburbs — and are already arranging Voter ID Days with Registrars offices in both southern Georgia and the metro Atlanta area to help voters in need to obtain the required document to vote in November 2024. This is a joint effort of Hope Springs and the Black Churches we have been working with since the Georgia Senate Runoffs in 2021.
278 volunteers canvassed came out to knock on doors in 7 Florida counties on Saturday. They knocked on 19,429 doors and talked to 1,668 voters. 1013 of those voters filled out at least part of the Issues Survey.
The Top 3 concerns of the voters we talked to last Saturday were the Economy, School Boards and especially the rancor and increasing partisanship in school boards, and third were concerns over Jobs, specifically at Disney World (and their impact on Jobs in general in the state).
Biden Approval among the Central Floridians we talked to was at 56% last Saturday and 11% expressed some measure of Disapproval. 8% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Rick Scott was doing while 37% expressed Disapproval.
7% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. DeSantis was doing a good job, 42% said they disapproved of the job he was doing. Democrats continue to voice concerns about the governor “getting a free pass” from the media because he is running for president. His War on Disney is especially irritating to voters in Central Florida And we are not finding a lot of support for DeSantis among Hispanics in Central Florida (where they have been called Mickey Ricans). In Duval County (Jacksonville), DeSantis’ approval rating is falling.
83 Florida voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. These remain especially popular in Osceola and Duval counties. In Osceola, voters tell us they don’t feel comfortable approaching their local elected officials but have complaints about public works anyway. We send completed CSRs 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 Constituent Service Request forms and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.
Our very first question on the Issues Surveys is whether the person we are talking to is registered to vote at their current home address. We also ask if there is anyone living there who needs to be registered as well. In Florida, given the current laws, we offer up a tablet with the Secretary of State website up so that voters can register or update their information themselves. 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 change residences more frequently than normal. But registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is also critical to our approach. Arizona has a much more friendly voter registration system, including the ability to opt in to permanent early voting. Of course, canvassing 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.
In Florida, though, the new law requires voters to provide, in addition to their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number OR their driver license OR state ID card number to make an address change. Which is par for the course this year, but here’s the part that is likely to stump people who move around. You have to remember which one you provided, because you have to provide the same one every single time you interact with your local Supervisor of Elections, or your request won’t be granted. Supervisors of Elections won’t have access to other databases, so they can only "verify” a request by the information the voter has provided. But this is something we have learned to track so that if the voter registration was not successful, we can go back.
We registered 4 new voters in Florida on Saturday, 36 voters who updated their addresses. We use the Secretary of State website to register voters in Florida, in order to met Florida’s difficult restrictions there.
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. We also ask voters if they have an problems that local, state or federal governments need to address in their neighborhoods.
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 has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022). There is a lot of work to be done! Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.
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. That includes making sure that out-of-state workers at Disney know to, and how to, obtain a State ID card if they don’t want to give up their out-of-state DL but still want to vote in Florida. 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/hopevoteprotect
Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!