The Kerry camp. needs YOU / Diary 2 from Col. OH

Part 2 in a series about my 11-day stay in Columbus OH (from Boston, MA) to volunteeer.

Part 1

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about the parties is how many of their employees are kids fresh out of college--people who have clearly never before been in a major campaign.  As a result, they made, and continue to make, amateurish mistakes.  In particular, there was an obsessive focus on making their quota of numbers (number of people polled on a daily basis, to report to the state HQ) to the neglect of actually getting votes.

My diary yesterday was about how I tried to help them materially by purchasing office supplies and bumper stickers.  Here's a list of some thing I did in my attempt to fill the gaps in how they dealt with people.

• When phone bankers and canvassers handed in their papers with lists of voters, sometimes they would note something next to a person's name that went beyond the person's favoring Kerry/Bush/Nader/Undecided.  For example, sometimes there would be a note such as "Send information on health care,"  "Send her an absentee ballot application," or "Asked to be taken off our calling list." or even "Moved, but new person at address, so-and-so, supports Kerry."  Before I arrived, these notes were not being followed up on:  support level was simply noted by the data entry people, and the papers then shoved into a box.  

• Canvassers were NOT given voter-registration forms or absentee ballot applications, despite them having them right there in the office!  So when a canvasser encounters Kerry supporters who are not registered to vote, which typically happens once or twice each time a canvasser goes out (In my two canvasses I registered 4 people and found 2 people who needed absentee ballots.), rather than simply register them on the spot, they are forced to 1) Take down their name on the form.  2) Pray that someone actually does go through the papers later (See above.).  3) Have this person use and envelope and 2 first-class stamps to send them a pre-stamped form.  4) Pray that thee Kerry fan don't screw up filling it in.  5) Pray that they get the form in on time

• Volunteers were often not told about the myriad of opportunities to help; many were simply told to come in and phone bank.  Now some people like to phone bank (I personally hate it.) but an analysis of old canvass/call sheets showed that someone knocking on doors reaches at least twice as many people, probably 3-4 times as many, in the same amount of time.  And of course a face-to-face encounter with a supporter is far more likely to persuade an undecided voter than is a phone call.  So why were many volunteers, not informed about the existence of the canvass?

• When a caller did make contact with a voter, they would typically forget to ask them about whom others in their household supported, meaning others would have to call the same residence all over again.

• Along similar lines, callers were not trained to offer voter registration forms to unregistered Kerry supporters, nor even absentee ballot applications to elderly Kerry supporters.

As a volunteer there, I did my best to rectify these problems, with varying degrees of success.

On my own initiative, I spent several days going though their entire backlog of canvass sheets and following up on requests.  The Kerry people agreed to have a volunteer spend the 60-90 minutes/day to stay on top of this from now on, and I trained a couple of people and wrote up instructions.  This was my one real success.

On the other issues I was able to rectify these issues when I was there, but despite my pleading (done in the most diplomatic way possible), the kids there refused to make it standard procedure.  I'm still tearing my hair out about them not giving registration forms to canvassers.  My back-of-the-envelope calculation indicated that if doing so were standard in Ohio, we'd get at least 10,000, possibly a lot more, new Kerry voters for practically zero effort.  Their rationale, by the way was that "Other groups are focusing on voter registration."  sigh

At minimum, it did make me feel very needed.

In fairness, there were areas where the people were doing a good job.  The day-to-day operations were surprisingly well-organized.  They were implementing a system of precinct campaigns--people who would canvass their neighbors, which seemed to be going very well.  They're also doing a great job trying to make sure Nader doesn't flout the law by getting into the OH ballot without enough legitimate signatures (more on that tomorrow).  It's just that if they'd been a bit less focused on their voter-contact number quota and a bit more focused on actually getting people to vote for Kerry, at least when it didn't take extra effort, they could get at least 20% more bang for their buck (or more precicely, 20% more bang for their hour of volunteer labor).

This is where you come in.  I will end with a plea to go to your local Kerry office and help!  Or take a trip if you can And, if you see something they're neglecting to do, please speak up!  Perhaps if enough other volunteers request voter reg. forms it will become standard policy.  If you tell one eager volunteer who hates phones about other ways he/she can help, you'll get that person coming back.  Remember that, if you have volunteered before, you in all likelihood have more experience than do the people in the office.  In general, they all need volunteers.

Coming tomorrow:  Diary 3:  response from the field, and the battle against "Zell" Nader, and other miscellany.

•  Coming To Ohio

  Will be volunteering with ACT in Cleveland for 2 days Sep 9-11 then on 11-13 will be going to Columbus.  Would love to come help out at the Kerry office, so let me know how/where...e-mail is [e-mail].

  by dansac on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 06:56:01 AM PDT

  •  Columbus contact info.

    Ohio Democratic Party   ·  
    271 E. State St.   ·  Columbus, OH  43215
    614-221-6563
    271 East State Street in Columbus OH is downtown, just a couple of blocks from the Greyhound bus terminal.  They're on the block that's just east of 4th Avenue

    I worked with a guy named Eric Greenwald.  His email is [e-mail]   Email him ahead of time and let him know you're coming.  He's a good guy.

    Different people have different preferences, but my own experience is that volunteering directly for the Kerry campaign is about 1/3 again more effective than volunteering for ACT.  The reason for this is that, when you canvass for Kerry, you're wearing Kerry stuff, you say you're volunteering for Kerry, so everyone knows why you're there and 90+% will answer your questions.  When I volunteered for ACT, most people have no clue who ACT is, and at least 40% of people are highly suspicious that you're going to ask them for money and won't talk.

    As to other activities, the Kerry campaign really needs smart people as I illustrated above due to their huge room for improvement, whereas ACT seems to know what it's doing.  But hey, whatever floats your boat...

    by Go Vegetarian on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 07:23:19 AM PDT

    •  Heh.

      I remember Eric--he organized for Dean in Iowa.

      by The Cunctator on Wed Sep 08, 2004 at 02:20:45 PM PDT

•  Hey Ohio!

  Kerry's doing a blitzkrieg tour of Ohio in the next few days, starting at Springfield tonight, and going to Akron, Newark, and Steubenville.

  What absolutely blows is that I work on Fridays and Saturdays, so the only one I have a shot at getting to is the one tonight, which is an hour and a half or so away from me.  Hopefully I'll be able to go, tho - it might be interesting to catch Kerry's first post-RNC speech, to say the least.

  by Lufah on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 07:05:35 AM PDT

•  Go Vegetarian

  By any chance, do you know anything about the Get Out the Vote effort in eastern Ohio?  I have someone who is willing to work on election day to drive voters to the polls there.

  by DCDemocrat on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 07:08:50 AM PDT

  •  Sorry.

    But I do know that in Ohio anyone 62 and older can request an absentee ballot, and it's a lot less work for everyone if they do this.

    by Go Vegetarian on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 07:24:30 AM PDT

    •  I just e-mailed her the

      state party contact information that you provided above.  This young woman is my employee.  I've told her that she can go home to Ohio on election day provided she drives Ohio Democrats to the polls all day long.

      by DCDemocrat on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 07:34:46 AM PDT

•  Recommended!

  Thanks for your hard work. Tip for you, if you want it, post a jar.

  by Joan in Seattle on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 07:09:49 AM PDT

•  Alas

  What you say about inexperienced kids running the show is true at local ACT offices as well as the party offices. Political campaigns are training grounds for people who later go on to run other things, when in fact the parties and the 527s should be recruiting seasoned management pros to plan and adminster things. The soft skills (getting the message out to swingers and motivating the core) are usually handled well by the kids, but money and time wasted on lack of uniform training, misplaced priorities and badly planned canvass routes.

  We are, however, too far along to make a change in organizational structure. The best approach is to offer yourself as a resource, make suggestions and perform your limited role as best you can. Training is a great area to focus on, since your efforts are then multipled as more people will do things well. I love the fact that you are getting the word out that a couple extra minutes spent to register a new voter is time well spent. Voter reg, especially in those states with early deadlines, is essential.

  Thanks for your excellent diaries on this, Go Veg. Three cheers to you ... and to everyone else who is actually working in the trenches in the swing states, especially if you don't live here!

  by pHunbalanced on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 07:22:24 AM PDT

•  bad management

  I don't think that bad management is solely due to inexperience. Bad management can be do to the fact that people are young and or inexperienced or just do to the fact that some people just don't have those skills and never will. Look at how many incompetent people are managing things in the non political world.

  If there is too much of a focus on quota numbers and if the lower level people in charge aren't trained right then that is frequently a problem where the rot starts at the top.  And from my experience the Ohio Democratic party is very inept.  

  by Sedge on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 07:32:20 AM PDT

•  I posted this to another Columbus intern

  He was about to work in the same office, during what I suspect was the same period you were there. Given what you're writing about in this series, let me repost this to add the perspective from another side of the situation- a volunteer.

  I'm one of the Columbus Kerry volunteers that will be floating through your internship. Here's a couple of things for you to consider as you jump into this. Please don't take any part of this personally, because I have no earthly idea who you are and you haven't even started work yet LOL! I've been wanting to smack a couple of coordinators over the last few weeks and that's just not productive, so I'll put my thoughts down here instead.

  Find us more places to go where we can staff tables or just walk around with a clipboard.  Many of the volunteers have never done campaign work and are really nervous about doing door to door or calling. However, we WILL happily stand anywhere for hours on end doing voter registration and signing up other volunteers. Remember, you've got to work with our strengths too.

  A lot of us are old enough that email is still awkward to manage, so don't dis the volunteers who don't do technology well. Also, be polite to the volunteers and think through things when you're  coordinating events. Please don't assume that I am able to read the critical email that you send to my work email at 10 pm on Saturday night, with information I need to have before an event the next morning (people keep doing stuff like that). You get frustrated, I have no info, everybody loses.

  There are a whole lot of us and we're all adults, so we will show up most of the time. Make sure we know who to call if we can't make it-not just the campaign line, but a person.

  Show some forethought- if you have 40 phones, don't have 80 people show up to phone bank. If we give you our one free night a week, we don't want to mill around aimlessly. If we don't have things to do that clearly contribute to the cause, we may get frustrated and not want to come the next time.

   We're not stupid. Explain clearly the nature of the activity and any limitations to what we can do or say, write down any numbers/addresses that we may need for crib notes later, and then just stand back and let us do our thing. Most of the time, we are really good at talking to people because we have been in the workforce for years. You don't have to micromanage us unless we ask for that level of help.

  There are a lot of volunteers and not that many events left to work before the voter registration cutoff (and we think that's critically important in Ohio).  Make it easier  for us to work at multiple locations. In Columbus, I haven't seen anybody in front of grocery stores, churches, post offices or banks doing voter registration (and a lot of them would allow that if we're not too partisan). Find a way for us to hit things other than fairs/festivals. For example, the local Oktoberfest is at the end of September and you will discover that it's already over-booked with eager volunteers. Kroger and Meijers are open every day- how about producing do it yourself GOTV/Kerry lobby kits and reaching out to local establishments to set up ground rules for volunteers? We show up, pick up materials from you, do the local thing, then drop off the results.

  Don't think that we underestimate the value of what you're doing. We wish that we could take off work and do the same thing, but we're the ones that are struggling with stagnant wages in an impossibly brutal employment market. We're counting on you to help us direct our efforts so that we can make a difference, too. Also, don't be shy about telling us why you're there and what you want to do with your life. We know people who might give you a job, and we can write hellacious recommendations, too.

  You can't save the world from Bush all by yourself, so don't worry yourself into high blood pressure about this election. You will just get over-anxious and drive us all nuts. The volunteers already know that together, WE can save this country from another four years of this thoughtless megalomaniac. That's why we're volunteering in unprecedented numbers, because despite our grave concerns about this country, we know we CAN make a difference. Figure out where to point us, and we will get the job done.
  

  by histopresto on Thu Sep 02, 2004 at 08:58:23 AM PDT