Professional Documents
Culture Documents
What is Field?
Field organizing is the act of reaching out to voters through direct, one-on-one communication. Some people refer to it as voter contact or grassroots organizing, but the ultimate goal is to contact voters directly, identify the ones who support you, and get them to the polls to vote for you on Election Day. Field organizing is a cross between an art and a science While the craft of eld organizing is based on understanding and utilizing numbers, it also relies on creativity and instinct from people on the ground to reach out to voters in a way that is personal, efcient and, most importantly, relevant to peoples lives. Voter Contact Manual 2004 CHAPTER 1 1
Field organizing is a dynamic process that is adjusted and changed during the course of a campaign. At the beginning of a race you may make certain assumptions about goals. But in the long run your goals will be impacted by unanticipated factors such as a local ballot initiative that affects turnout or the actions of from various groups who promised resources but didnt come through. All the good number crunching in the world cant take that into account. Most people think that eld organizing takes place in the last two months of the campaign (September and October). However, effective organizing is the result of year-round efforts that culminate in activities designed to mobilize your vote.
CHAPTER TWO
Targeting
The rst and most crucial thing you need to know in a campaign is how many votes it will take for you to win. Remember: you are not trying to come close or almost win. You want to make sure your eld program is going to generate at the very least 50 percent of the vote plus one more vote, and you should plan to win with a more comfortable margin of two percent.
Sometimes youll hear campaign professionals ask, So, how do you get to fty plus one? Theyre asking what the plan is to get just enough votes to win. Since winning by one vote counts just as much as winning by one million votes, you should choose the most efcient path and plan to win by fty plus one, and for planning purposes, fty-two percent of the vote. As we look at achieving 52% of the vote, traditionally, voters can be broken down into the following demographic categories: 1. Democratic Base Voters. These are the people who will always vote for you as long as you get them to the polls. The goal with these voters is to maximize turnout wherever possible. Anyone taking part in eld organizing activities whether directly through your campaign, through an allied effort, or through the party should keep this in mind when reaching out to core constituent voters. 2. Persuadable Voters. Often referred to as ticket-splitters, these are people who have not yet made up their minds to vote for a particular candidate. The goal is to move persuadable voters into the Democratic column. Usually persuasion is best left to the individual campaigns, but county parties can help create an environment which is more favorable to Democrats. What you say and the issues on which you run should take into careful consideration the views of persuadable voters.
3. Republican Base Voters. Figure out who they are and where they live and never go there! They arent going to vote for you and its a waste of time and resources to try to reach them.
Courtesy of Ken Strasma
Do target:
D. Swing voters who always vote for persuasion E. Democrats who only sometimes vote for GOTV F. Swing voters who only sometimes vote 2nd persuasion
At the end of the day, BASE VOTE + PERSUADABLE VOTE = NUMBER OF VOTES NEEDED TO WIN. If that equation doesnt add up, you need to reassess your eld strategy. Voters can also be broken down geographically, and often these demographic groups are clustered: 1. Urban 2. Suburban 3. Rural
Geographic Targeting
To gure out your vote goal at a comfortable total of 52%, you will most likely need your base voters and some persuadable voters. To identify where and who those voters are, you will need precinct-level data from previous elections that indicates how those Democrats have done in those precincts. This information is the base of your targeting. Most Democratic campaigns will use targeting produced by the state party, commercial vendor or the National Committee for an Effective Congress (NCEC). Check with your local or state Democratic Party to see if targeting is available. But whatever type of targeting is produced, these are common terms used: Registration: The total number of registered voters in a particular precinct, town, county, or state. Turnout Percent: The percentage of registered voters who have voted in similar elections in past years. Expected Vote: The number of people expected to vote in the current election. Democratic Performance: The average percentage a Democratic candidate may get in the jurisdiction you are targeting. You can discern this gure by calculating the average vote percentage of the Democrat in the race over the past three to four elections. High Democratic Performance Precincts: Precincts with a 65 percent and above Democratic Party Performance. Most base voters live within high Democratic performance precincts. Swing Precincts: Precincts with a 45-64.9 percent Democratic performance. These are where most of your persuadable voters live. Low Democratic Performance Precincts: Precincts with a Democratic performance of lower than 44.9 percent. Most Republican voters live in these precincts.
Expected Vote _____ X (.50) + 1 = __________ Minimum Votes Needed To Win Expected Vote _____ X (.52) = ___________ Comfortable Margin of Victory
Calculation 2
Select three bad elections Election 1 Election 2 Election 3 Average Election/Race Democratic %
Find the size of the decit: (Comfortable) - (Dem Base Vote) = Vote Decit (__________________) - (_________________) = __________________
Calculation 4
(Democratic Performance) X (Expected Turnout) = Expected Dem Vote _____________________ X ________________ = _________________
Calculation 5
Compare Expected Democratic Vote (Cal #3) vs. Comfortable Victory (Cal. #1) ______________ vs. _____________
If the result is a surplus, then the task is to hold the Democratic vote. If the result is negative, then the task is to persuade ticket-splitters.
Calculation 6
(Vote Decit) / (Persuasion Index) = Percentage of Persuadables to Persuade (__________) / (____________) = __________________
Calculation 8
What are the goals for winning Persuadables vs. turning out sporadic-voting Democrats?
Compare the percentage of the ticket-splitters you have to win with the GOTV index. Make a judgment about goals here: We will aim to win/move _____% of the ticket-splitters. Therefore, we will aim to move ______% of the sporadic-voting Democrats.
Demographic Targeting
Now that you know where your geographic targets are, it is time to nd Demographic targets within those precincts. This is an attempt to be smart, however, it is really a guess because you never know how someone has voted based on their voting record who they voted for is a secret. So we need to take a guess. This is where your voter le becomes a key tool for targeting. The data will give you counts of certain universes. The more information on your le, the more targeted your universes can be. Party registration is a key piece of information, and when added to primary election and general election voter history, you can determine who your base voters are. In other words, a person who is a registered Democrat, and has voted in the past two primaries (one Presidential and one Gubernatorial), and voted in the past two general elections (one Presidential and one Gubernatorial) is more likely to show up for the election, and therefore, requires few or perhaps no reminders about the election. He or she is going to vote. Other key information is gender, race, age and any other information that can help you make a decision about which voters will get you to the 52 percent, and ultimately what is the best way to talk to them.
CHAPTER THREE
The Data
It is important to review a few things immediately in your le: What elds or categories of information are on the le? When was the le last updated by the local election ofcials? Do you have the most up to date precinct information in the le? Does it include every voter in the state? Are any counties missing?
Good data will help your campaign make the right targeting and resource allocations.
The following are some basic elds that need to be included (some are not available in all voter les): Voting history for all voters. (At the very least, should be from the previous two primary and general elections for the race you are running.) Accurate phone numbers for each voter. (Phone match should be at 70 percent, and if it isnt the le can be matched against phone lists purchased through vendors or by having volunteers look through the phone book.)
Accurate addresses for each voter. (Addresses can be updated using the National Change of Address le (NCOA) from the postal service.) Date of birth Gender Race Party afliation Early and Vote-by-Mail voters Registration date Email
During your phone banks and canvassing efforts, any information you get back should be applied to the voter le. That information is valuable to you because it creates the most efcient list of voters and eliminates wasted calls or visits. Other bits of information that may be useful to note in your voter le are: labor union membership, a pro-choice organization membership, or gun ownership. This information can be obtained by afliated or endorser organizations and through state licenses.
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In-House or Vendor-Maintained?
The choice between keeping your voter le maintained in-house or hiring an outside vendor to build and maintain it is entirely up to the campaign. Your decision depends upon your resources of time, people and money. For example, if you have a short period of time (several months) to use the data you may want to purchase voter les and if you have a longer time, you may want to build the les yourself. When making the decision, ask yourself: How many staff members are available to work with the data? How many eld ofces will be using the le? How much data will be appended back to the le on a daily basis? Can the current computer hardware support the le? Does the staff understand how to use the software?
One ofce with competent staff probably can handle an in-house le, but you must make sure you have the appropriate tools. A large operation with several eld ofces calls for a vendor-maintained le that can be accessed at all hours, day or night, without the help of the vendor. A Web-Based format is often most efcient as it allows for easy access and easy updating. However, this requires Internet connections and computers at every ofce, and a quality control system for matching back data consistently.
Questions for Voter File Vendors: 1) Do you have non-political, or non-Democratic clients that you manage les for? 2) How often will you update the le? 3) What enhancements will you make to the le? 4) How long will it take to get data orders? 5) Will I be charged for each data order? 6) Do you have software or a Web-based management platform to manipulate data and create reports? 7) Can I customize walking lists and phoning lists?
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8) What is the process for appending new data, IDs, etc., to the le from vendors and eld programs? 9) Can I have multiple users? 10) How many clients do you currently have?
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CHAPTER FOUR
Phones
Used strategically, phones are an opportunity to communicate and constantly |reinforce your message to a large group of voters in a short amount of time. They are one of the most commonly-used forms of voter contact for voter and issue identication, persuasion, volunteer recruitment, event notication and voter turnout. Make sure your message being delivered on the phones is the same message being delivered on the media, in the mail and at the doors.
Decide how many phone calls you need to make and how many phones are needed to execute those calls. Then estimate the number of identication phone calls and GOTV calls that need to be made. With those gures, calculate the number of hours and phones it will take to do the job and determine if you will use a vendor for paid phone calls. Check your resources. The backbone of any sort of organizing is a great list, i.e., voter les and volunteer lists. Discuss this with campaign staff and volunteers, and ask them to contribute lists of friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. Compare these lists to the voter le and establish what needs to be appended. Research where you can obtain this additional information, then discuss how you can increase the accuracy of the list to maximize the effectiveness of your calling.
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Then develop a plan outlining how phone calls help win the race, who will be targeted, how many phone calls will be made and any plans to expand your universe.
Forms of Calls
Once youve gured out who youre calling and why, you need to decide how. Determine the advantages and disadvantages of vendor live, vendor auto call, and volunteer live methods of calling and coordinate your campaign accordingly.
Phone Vendors
There are a number of consulting rms that provide paid phone banks to candidates. Depending on the type of call, you may pay anywhere from 35 cents to 85 cents for a complete call. Some phone consultants will also send out a piece of mail to follow up on the call. If you do not want to hire a phone consultant, you may want to hire your own phoners. If you opt for a paid phone vendor they can usually provide either live callers or automated calls (sometimes referred to as robo-calls) depending on your needs.
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and require very few resources beyond money. Auto calls are delivered within hours to thousands of people, and are most effective when a notable voice is left on an answering machine, such as the candidate, a well-known political gure or a celebrity.
Phone Banks
While hiring a paid phone bank is the quickest, most accurate and reliable way to ensure that your campaigns calls will get made, there are two distinct disadvantages to shelling out the money for a phone bank. First, increasingly, more people are likely to hang up on an operator. Second, even though volunteers are less reliable, the process of recruiting and setting up volunteer phone banks creates a trained pool of workers that the campaign will need for GOTV. Volunteer phone banks are the cheapest way to make calls, although volunteers are the least reliable of all phoners. If you have the ability to coordinate both volunteer phoners and supervisors for those phoners to ensure that everyone will complete all of their calls, you have built an operation that is a cost-effective way to get your calls done. Assuming that volunteers cannot be relied on to complete their assigned calls, a good strategy is to use paid phones to call your most important target areas or voters, and use volunteers to call the less crucial areas. If you decide to have both paid and volunteer phoners it is important that they work in that you keep them in separate locations. Nothing will be more disheartening to your volunteers than if they nd out a group of people is being paid to do what they are doing for free. Here are a few things to remember when making calls. If youre using volunteer phone bankers make sure they remember these important points: You are intruding into a persons life, uninvited. Remember how happy you were to talk to the last person who tried to sell you something over the phone? It is best to keep your phone scripts simple and to the point. All your phoners should be provided with materials before they make their rst calls. Phoners should always attend a short training session. Just as with a rst-time canvasser, phoners should be given a chance to make a few practice calls using role-playing with the phone bank coordinator or volunteer coordinator.
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Top Ten Volunteer Phone Bank Rules: 1. Smile they can tell. 2. Make calls in priority order. 3. Stick to the script. 4. Decide in advance if you are going to leave a message on an answering machine. 5. Use a uniform marking system to record call results. 6. Dont get into prolonged discussions move on. 7. Allow ve rings before hanging up. 8. Ask to speak to an adult. 9. Leave the sheet blank if the phone was busy or if no one was home. 10. If you get a wrong number, dont cross the name off. Try to nd the correct number elsewhere later.
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Phone banking is not always as easy as it might seem. As you get started, keep the following in mind:
Supervision is critical. The phone bank coordinator or volunteer coordinator should listen to phoners as they make their rst few calls. Not everyone is suited for phone calling. The phone bank coordinator is responsible for making sure the phone bank is full (volunteer or paid). The coordinator should schedule two to three shifts a day. Recruit twice as many volunteers as you have phones. The eld director should determine which precincts or which voters are to be called each night. The phone banks should make the calls in priority order. Give clear instructions as to how to mark the phone lists with calling results The marking system should be placed prominently on the walls in front of each phone. Keeping everyones energy level and morale high is critical, especially among volunteer phoners. People should be given frequent breaks and constant encouragement. Having the candidate occasionally stopping by to make a few calls can be a big morale booster. Phone banks are people-, money-, and time-intensive. Information from the marked sheets can be entered into a computer to generate lists of supporters for GOTV or a list of undecided voters to be mailed or phoned for persuasion.
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Direct Mail
Over the last 20 years, direct mail has evolved into a highly targeted technique used to convey a stealth message. It can be used for persuasion, GOTV, and fundraising, and is an effective tool for delivering a candidates message directly to voters. The best direct mail is carefully targeted. Some examples include mail pieces introducing your candidate to newly-registered voters, issue-specic mail to undecided voters, and reminders about Election Day to core constituency voters. Although direct mail is expensive, as television and radio costs have skyrocketed, the relative cost of direct mail is a more efcient way to communicate with targeted voters. Integrating your campaigns direct mail plan with your voter contact activities is critical for success.
In order to make your direct mail effort a success: The message used for broadcast media needs to be coordinated with the direct mail message. The message used on the phone banks needs to be the same as the direct mail message. The message being communicated during free media events also needs to be the same as the direct mail message. Who do we target with direct mail? Undecideds: Voters who we believe are likely to be undecided about who to vote for. Soft supporters: Voters who might be supporting our candidate or the opponent, but might change their mind in the course of the campaign. Base voters: Voters who rmly support our cause but who vote less frequently.
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unregistered or low-frequency voters. Examples include sending a pro-choice message to persuadable unmarried women or sending Social Security pieces to seniors. Direct mail can be used to send repetitive contacts to the same audience Several pieces of mail can be sent to targeted audiences, to reinforce the message. Mail is an effective way to deliver negative messages. Mail is a good medium to get out a negative message that you do not want on television or to a broader audience. It is important that your charges are accurage and believable. Use footnotes and litations to validate your claims. And using outside sources such as newspapers, non-partisan advocacy groups and community leaders will make your charges more credible.
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Negative This type of mail educates voters about the short comings of any opponent. These pieces generally do not mention the candidate were supporting. GOTV This should remind supporters and low-frequency base voters to vote. It is often personalized to inform the voter of their specic polling place or to provide them with a phone number to call for more information or a ride to the polls. Fundraising These mail pieces should request money and specically state what it is to be used for, either in the form of the cause or a specic program. Third party mail Third party mail is sent by allied organizations such as labor unions, business groups, PTA, etc.
Mail Design
When deciding on mail designs, concentrate on enticing the reader to open up the mail piece. The most important challenge is creating a cover tat will draw the reader in, capture the readers attention and engage him or her with photos and headlines that speak to their concerns, beliefs and values or simply to pique their curiosity. Keep in mind when sending a letter from the candidate or a surrogate that one of the most often-read parts is the postscript. Again, one of the benets of direct mail is that it can be used to deliver your message when you cannot afford to reach voters with electronic media or when you need to reinforce the message shown on TV. It is important that your mail be well-designed. Modern political direct mail is in competition with slick, glossy, full-color corporate and commercial mail. Wherever feasible, campaigns should retain professional help in putting together a direct mail program.
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Remember, state and Party committees can also send out mail at a reduced rate. Check with the state Party or relevant party committee to determine how they can include your campaign in their mail program. Once you have established any supporting or endorsing organizations that are able to send mail on your behalf, determine their limits as to what they can do.
Door-to-Door Canvassing
Door-to-door canvassing is a highly-targeted technique that is extremely effectivevoters can really identify with a campaign if their neighbors or other individuals are on their doorsteps describing the candidate or issue directly to them. It is important to remember that any canvassing program should work in conjunction with all other voter contact programs so that messages being delivered on the phones are the same as those being delivered at the doors to the targeted voters. Canvassing is labor-intensive if done on a volunteer basis, and costly if paid. However, it is also very effective when used early in the campaign to help with issue identication, candidate identication, to register voters, to fundraise, to persuade voters, and to GOTV. The key is to have a clear goal, be organized, and remember details. Goals arent reached overnight in a canvass program, they are met over a sustained period of time. Therefore, it is important to build enough time into your program. If you decide to use a volunteer canvass, it is important to take care of the volunteers. Train them, feed them, make sure they are safe, and thank them for their time. You want them to keep coming back so you can reach your goals, so make sure they are well prepared and have a positive experience.
Canvassing Kit includes: Script Map Voter List Pen/Pencil Campaign Literature Water Sack Lunch
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Make sure there is a reporting system that is easy to understand for the canvassers as well as the staff/volunteers who are going to key the information into the data management system. A reporting system will also make it easier to keep track of how many contacts have been made, how many supporters have been identied and how many undecided voters need to be contacted again.
Canvassing operations require detailed plans, detailed reporting, and follow up.
Literature Distribution
Literature distribution is the most basic form of campaigning and entails placing literature in a secure area on the doors of houses in the area or precinct you want to cover. Literature blowing around the neighborhood is a wasted resource and a potential nuisance to perspective voters. Be aware that it is illegal for campaign literature to be placed in mailboxes. It is not necessary for volunteers to knock on the doors or talk to voters during a lit drop. One way to target literature distribution is by concentrating on persuadable precincts or by leaving literature only at the homes of registered or target voters. Although any type of literature can be left at homes during a lit drop, literature left at the door is less likely to be read than anything sent through the mail. Create a system to collect unused literature get and reports on areas completed. Because lit drops are done by volunteers, they are time-intensive but do not cost a lot of money. Volunteers should be given training and the materials they will need, including a campaign button or sticker, written instructions, a map and directions to the area where the literature is to be distributed, a trouble number to call if there is a problem, volunteer cards, and Q cards, or forms to put down requests for information, in case they happen to talk to voters.
Leafleting
Leaeting is similar to literature distribution, except the literature is distributed at public places like work places, high trafc mass transit stops, shopping centers or college campuses. Leaeting is less targeted than lit drops, because you have little control over who is taking your literature or where these voters live.
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Volunteers doing this still need the basic materials, but little training. Do not hand out expensive or lengthy literature because it is unlikely it will be read or taken home. This is the opportunity to hand out simple one-page leaets with the goal of building a crowd for an event, for example. Lastly, leaeting is volunteer-intensive and denitely low-impact, but does not take a lot of time or money.
Internet Organizing
While Internet organizing has increased a campaigns ability to reach a large number of activists and voters, it is important to remember that it must be backed up by other organizing tactics. Internet organizing allows you to build communities online. Women for, Labor for, Sportsmen for, Latinos for, Students for, e-Precinct Leaders for, can all have a specic places to go on your website, and they can receive messages specic to their constituencies from your campaign which will help you to develop the base vote and other constituency groups. You might encourage a group to have its own listserv, so they can talk to each other more directly to organize fundraisers, distribute talking points, or recruit volunteers. This method can be either highly targeted or not and is usually relatively inexpensive. You should assume that anything put out on the Internet is in the public domain. This is highly benecial for e-precincts, event turnout, volunteer recruitment, grassroots fundraising, and GOTV.
Events
An event is the only time a candidate will have a direct communication with voters who are in an audience. Therefore, events are highly targeted if done by invitation, or they can be less so if open to the community, and they should be created not only to communicate with specic voters on key issues such as education, health care, the budget or the environment, but also to build an organization or motivate people to vote. Often eld organizers see events as something that is imposed on them when they are trying to identify voters or turn people out to vote. However, events are opportunities for the eld operation. You need to invite people, so make sure your targeted voters or core constituents are the ones you invite. An auto call from the candidate to a targeted universe is a great way to crowd build. Or postcards with handwritten notes from volunteers is another way. Test your volunteer operation by having them do event notication calls but give them
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specic goals as to how many committed attendees you need. At every event there should be a team of people collecting volunteer information, registering voters and making sure that all of the information gets back into your database.
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CHAPTER FIVE
TIPS ON WRITING A PLAN 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Keep it simple Be creative/think outside the box. Be exible. A plan is always a working document. Detail the activities include a timeline: Time/date/location of activities. Measure the success of your plan with specic goals. Hold your organization accountable. Share the document with your staff it is not a state secret. Always, always, always TRAIN volunteers and staff. Keep your resources people, time, and money in mind when writing your plan.
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Voter contact/Programming Voter ID Persuasion Early voting/Vote by Mail GOTV Timeline/calendar Budget
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The rst thing to do is gather previous precinct-level election data that tells you the turnout as well as the percentage of people who voted Democratic. You can nd this information by contacting your local elections board or by using your NCEC data. NCEC data is precinct-level demographic information provided by the National Committee for an Effective Congress (www.ncec.org). NCEC compiles election history by county and makes calculations about the expected voter turnout at the precinct level. Next, get to know who your voters really are. Are they a diverse group? Where do most of them live? Where do they work, and what types of jobs do they have? Are they working-class, middle-class or upper-income? To what sorts of organizations do they belong? These questions will help you to answer your next question, which is about your base. Who are your core constituents in this state or district? How many votes can you count on from within this core constituency, and can you pick them out of a voter le? (This will save you valuable efforttheres no point in preaching to the converted, especially if the converted are already planning on voting on Election Day.) Next, gure out what youre up againsthow many people do you predict are going to show up and vote? And who are they? From this number, calculate a liberal needed to win vote count52 percent of the turnout. Now, take the number of votes you need to win and subtract the base that youre counting on. Thats the number of people you need to identify and/or persuade. Ignoring Republicans, these are your target voters.
Data Management
Data management can be done in-house, or it can be contracted out. In order to decide who will manage your data you should consider whether you have someone who has both the time and the knowledge to handle such a project and whether or not you have the technology. If you dont have the right resources in-house, it may make sense to pay for it. For more information, refer to Chapter Four, Managing Your Data.
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Some places to consider looking as you begin to build your grassroots organization: Activists who have supported your candidate in the past. People with whom your candidate works. The candidates family. The candidates friends. The local and/or state Party.
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Low Impact Voter Contact Tactics: Surrogate Events Visibility (lawn signs, buttons, bumper stickers Literature Drops Leaeting
Staff
The number of eld staff you hire may depend on how much money you have, the role of eld in your campaign, or a combination of factors. In a campaign where you could run the eld operation of your dreams you might have the following staff: Field director Core constituency vote director Voter le manager Early Vote/Vote-by-Mail director Regional eld director Volunteer coordinator Field organizers Phone bank coordinators Precinct workers GOTV workers To run smoothly, the eld staff needs to understand their role and the roles of the people with whom they will be working. Therefore, prepare and distribute document that covers the following for each of the positions listed above: start date, responsibilities, how many (in the case of eld organizers and GOTV workers), and geographic area of concern (in the case of regional directors and eld organizers).
Constituency Organization
After considering your demographics, decide what kind of organization you want to build considering your people, time, and money resources. Will you group by precinct or by district? What level of people power will be available to you in each group? What can you ask of each group? Is it reasonable to expect an organization in every section of your district?
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Outreach
Working with constituencies means each constituency must have input into the part of the plan that affects its constituency. Each constituency should develop a written plan to be integrated into the whole plan. Successful campaigns contact their universe of voters 10 to 16 times during the course of an election, so you need to decide how your campaign will contact voters in each specic universe effectively while staying within the campaigns budget. This means that you must target who will be contacted and what you expect from each subsequent contact.
Consider the following questions when developing an outreach plan: What core constituencies will you specically reach out to? What other constituencies will you reach out to? How will you draw them into the campaign? How will you organize your core constituencies? How will you t them into your organization?
Core constituencies and other constituencies must be organized in the same way you organize the rest of your staff and the people of your districtin a concrete, numbers-driven manner. This means that you should not allow yourself any overlapping organizations, and each should have a clear goal.
Example (seniors): We will identify senior citizen center captain wherever possible. They will: 1. Canvass the senior center at least once one to two months prior to Election Day 2. Talk to undecided voters in the center. 3. Volunteer postcard campaigns to identify the core constituency group of supporters. 4. Arrange rides to polls.
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Training of Staff
To ensure that your staff is always ready for the next step of the campaign, schedule regular trainings. Regular trainings help the staff to keep ideas fresh in their minds and help re-boost morale. Conduct at least one training at the start of the campaign. The next should be held before massive phone banking and door-to-door operations begin, and nally there should be a comprehensive training before GOTV.
Staff Accountability
With all of the complex facets of a campaign, it is essential to account for the actions of all of your ground troops. The best way to do this is to build the accountability of all of your staff into your plan from the start. By requiring nightly, uniform reporting by your eld organizers, youll be able to access exactly what has been done at a glance. Below is an example of information that is required of people running a voter identication phone bank. (Obviously the questions would be somewhat different for persuasion calls or GOTV calls.) In addition, similar questions should be asked of those involved in any other type of voter contact.
A sample nightly tally sheet for a phone bank might ask some of the following questions: What geographic area were you calling? How many volunteers did you have? How many calls were completed? (Calls where the voter was not home or no one answered are not considered completed.) How many IDed for your candidate? How many IDed for your opponent? How many IDed as undecided?
The eld plan should detail exactly where the program stands in terms of hard numbers every day.
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Additionally, the Field Director should put out nightly reports on progress toward goals. Below is an example on identication: To date 14,422 for us 22,222 undecided 11,222 for opponent 222 Precinct Captains recruited 122 Election Day volunteers recruited Goal 25,212
432 250
Timeline
The timeline should be as detailed as possible and be considered a living and breathing document that will constantly to be updated as the campaign progresses. Start with natural deadlines such as Election Day, early voting dates, the deadline to register to vote, when ballots are mailed for Vote-by-Mail and Absentee voting, sample ballots mailed, holidays and reporting deadlines because they are xed on the calendar. Next, you should include dates to hire staff, voter contact program dates, fundraising events and free media dates. Include dates of media buys for television, radio and newspapers. Make sure you incorporate the candidates personal dates for family time and vacations so that nothing requiring his or her time is scheduled then.
Distribute the eld plan to the eld staff on the campaign so that everyone is working with the same assumptions.
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Budget
Make sure you: Detail every aspect of what you will be paying for in your eld operation. Use excruciatingly accurate projections. Be liberal in your estimates it is better to over-budget than under-budget. Put your budget on a cash ow spreadsheet how much are you going to spend and when.
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CHAPTER SIX
Voter Registration
There are several strategic reasons to conduct a voter registration drive: You need a larger pool of base voters to reach your vote goal; You want to have an early test of your organizational structure (paid staff and volunteer organization); You want to energize your core constituencies with a specic plan early in the campaign.
All of these are strategic goals that will further your voter contact plan. First developing a written plan for your voter registration drive. It will be the blueprint for your entire effort. So much goes into a voter registration drive, sometimes its hard to know where to start. The best thing to do is to put a plan of action down on paper. Youve got to answer some tough questions to begin your planning.
Set goals
o
What are your goals? How many Democrats do you need to register? o What are your targeted precincts or areas? o Why are these your targets precincts?
What are your states rules? What is your states deadline for voter registration? Is there an opportunity for same-day registration to be combined with GOTV? o Where are your local election board and registrars ofces?
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How can you coordinate with allied registration drives? What organizations should you contact? Who should be on your steering committee? How will you coordinate with your states Coordinated Campaign? How will you coordinate with core constituencies?
How many volunteers will you need to reach your goals? How many paid staff will you need to reach your goals? Who will you recruit to be volunteers? Who will coordinate work and door-to-door canvassing? How will you keep track of the progress?
What is your budget? Where will the money come from? When do you need the money?
What is your timeline or calendar? When and where will your drive take place? How long will your drive last? How many new and re-registrants do you need every week to meet your goals?
Legal
o o o
What is the system for verication? How many voters have been purged from the rolls for Election Day? Can you print registration forms?
Follow-up
o o
How will you follow up with newly-registered voters? How will you put new and re-registrants into the GOTV pool?
Get detailed in your plan. You can always alter it later. The key is to get the plan on paper now. The more details you can think of at this stage, the fewer surprises youll have later.
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Youre not going to be able to register everyone. Make your goals reasonable.
Make sure your registration goals are realistic. Take a look at your target areas and your resources. How many unregistered voters are there? How much time do you have? How many volunteers are you likely to have? How much money can you count on? The driving factor in setting your registraton goals is to nd the votes needed to put your candidate over the top on Election Day.
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Heres a sample of the basic elements of your timeline: Deadline All registrations must be submitted to Board of Elections BEFORE close of day. D-minus-40 days Compile lists of new registrants and forward to GOTV effort. D-minus-45 days Registration drive kickoff event. On-site registration begins. Door-to-door drive begins. D-minus-48 days Publicity materials distributed (posters, yers, press kits). D-minus-50 days Volunteers/staff recruited, assigned and trained. D-minus-55 days Materials prepared (walking kits for volunteers, publicity materials). D-minus-60 days Targeting completed. Request or print registration forms. D-minus-90 days Steering Committee formed. D-minus-150 days Contact and form coalitions. Obviously, many more items should be added to your timeline. This specic timing is not set in stone, but its a good place to start. As registration coordinator, you should develop this timeline, including all the dates and deadlines, volunteers, materials and activities involved in the campaign.
Your Organization
To be sure that everything gets done, youll need to assign responsibility to a few key coordinators in your campaign. This will be your steering committee. They must be people you can depend on and who will be accountable to you. The registration campaign coordinator is in charge of the overall voter registration campaign for the areaheading up the planning and evaluation components, supervising all staff and providing direction for the entire campaign. A volunteer coordinator is absolutely crucial to the success of your campaign. This person is in charge of volunteer recruiting, training, scheduling and reporting. Be sure the volunteer coordinator is one of the most organized and conscientious people available. You might also have a publicity/materials coordinator, in charge of getting and distributing the posters, leaets, registration forms and other handouts your volunteers will use. This person is also in charge of putting together press kits and releases for the media. A fundraising coordinator is the person who provides the money to do the kind of registration you have planned. The job includes working with the Coordinated Campaign, the state Party, and interested individuals or groups to raise the money (where the law allows). The fundraising coordinator is also the pointperson in charge of lining up in-kind contributions such as staff, ofce space, phones, copying, meeting space, etc. The transportation coordinator makes sure the volunteers get to the right places and have a way to get back. There should also be a platoon of transportation volunteers working at this persons direction, available to take people to registration sites. The door-to-door coordinator organizes the canvass, gets the walk lists and maps to the volunteers, and collects and reviews their report forms.
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Funding: 501(c)(4,5, or 6) non-prots can contribute to your drive if these groups have established political action committees. Contributions from their PACs can fund a partisan effort.
Be inclusive. It is important to have the support of leaders of these groups from the start. Keep them informed of your drives plans and progress. When they see that you are organized and on top of things, they will be less apprehensive when you seek their support or ask them to help recruit volunteers. And more importantly, you will not be seen as a threat.
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7. Implement, monitor and adjust together. The leaders of the groups you contact have worked for many years in their respective communities. They deserve to be treated with the respect theyve earned. Acknowledge their leadership. Without their help and endorsement, your drive will miss valuable opportunities. Ask them for: Advice on community outreach strategies. Help in the fundraising effort. Assistance in recruiting volunteers. Suggestions for good voter registration locations. Direction on specic issues important to the community.
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But remember, we want to register Democrats. Only target precincts with a strong Democratic performance rating.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Finally, it allows for more highly-targeted voter contact and, in some cases, messages.
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But alternative voting also brings some disadvantages: It greatly expands the voting season, sometimes turning Election Day into Election Month. It also moves up the timeline by which you need to be ready to contact voters. Second, many of these alternative voting methods result in more volunteer demands and increased expenses for your campaign, both at the voter contact level and at the paid media level. Finally, because they often have more money, Republicans can usually run more intensive, extensive vote-by-mail or early vote campaigns.
The following will highlight the ways in which your campaign can use an alternative voting campaign to your advantage while avoiding the potential downsides.
Early Vote
Early vote allows voters to cast their ballots in person at a designated polling place within a designated number of days before the election.
Though laws vary, early vote laws are dened and limited by: Who can vote (anyone, seniors, people planning to be out of town on Election Day, etc.) Where they can vote (City Hall or County Courthouse, satellite polling places, etc.) When they can vote (30 days to a few days before Election Day)
Look for opportunities to inuence polling (satellite) locations, hours, days of the week, and to make sure polls are fair.
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Vote-By-Mail and Absentee laws are dened and limited by: Who can vote by mail (anyone who wants, all, seniors or people with disabilities only, etc.) How you can vote by mail (by ballot request only, automatically receive mail ballot, etc.) When you can vote (how soon can you request a ballot, how soon can you return a ballot? What is the latest you can request/return a ballot?) Who can return or handle your ballot (only you, close relative, spouse, registrar, etc.)
Some examples of various VBM laws around the country: Oregon has held 100% VBM elections. In California, anyone can vote by mail upon request and, beginning in 2002, anyone can become a permanent mail voter without needing to ever request a ballot again. In Michigan, only voters over 60 or with a disability can request a mail ballot. Below is a chart explaining how to make Vote-by-Mail work for your campaign
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Although its called same day registration, it really means any resident can vote without registering, essentially turning a campaigns universe of potential targets from a concrete group of voters with a discrete voter history into a huge universe of eligible adults where weak vote history and lack of prior registration are not barriers to voting on Election Day, if motivated.
Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Venturas victory in 1998 is often credited to Minnesotas same day registration law.
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Are you targeting for persuasion? Or turnout? Just as an overall voter contact plan will have a persuasion program that is very different than its turnout program, so too will an effective alternative voting program. A common problem among some campaigns is not being able to determine whether a VBM or early vote program is about increasing turnout or persuading those who are already voting.
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Persuasion
Persuasion targets are people you do not necessarily need to turn out, but rather inuence. They are likely already voting by mail you just need to reach them with your message, preferably several times, before they vote. First, you need to determine which persuadable voters have a history of voting early or by mail and make sure your voter contact plan and budget incorporates early direct mail, persuasion phone calls, and other communications with these voters. Getting these voters in the bank before Election Day is crucial because voters tend to be very susceptible to the negative advertising, hit pieces, and anonymous iers that tend to come at the end of an election. An intensive program will track voters who have returned their ballots and remove them from future voter contact programs. This is time-and volunteerintensive, but can be important in very close, particularly local, elections.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
From a campaign perspective, your goal is to determine how many votes you can count on from these constituencies and make sure the constituencies have responsibility for a specic goals-based program that is part of the larger eld program.
Targeting
The rst and most crucial step in creating a constituency program is the targeting. Using voter le technology and census data, determine where your core constituent voters are and how to reach them. For core constituent targeting you should focus on voters who always vote and should be naturally inclined to vote Democratic, and Democrats who vote sporadically. Once youve identied where your constituent voters are and how youll reach them, youll need to calculate how many you need to turn out for you. In other words, how many core constituent voters do you need to get to fty plus one? To do this, keep in mind the number of votes you determined you need to win based on predicted turnout and the number of votes you determined you can expect from persuadable voters. How can base voter turnout be increased to make up for a deciency in persuadable voters? A voter registration program may be necessary to nd more Democratic base votes.
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Some ways to communicate effectively with your core constituent community include: Finding strong messengers. Identify people in the core constituent community who resonate with voters there. These people could be local or they could be nationally elected ofcials, media personalities, or religious and organization leaders. These messengers are often better voices for your candidate than the candidate and should be used as keynote speakers at events or asked to speak at rallies and press conferences. Using activist lists. By using lists of activists obtained from friendly organizations, your message can be moved very quickly and in a peer to peer manner, which is sometimes the most effective. Message pieces can be e-mailed, faxed, or mailed with a request that the recipient share it with 10 to 20 more friends. Allied organizations will often assist by moving similar messages to their membership. Incorporating communications. Building a website that is specically targeted to a unique base vote community helps to spread message and provides a lucrative source of constituency activists, volunteers, and potential donors. Adding a function to capture contact information helps to build your activist e-mail list and ID voters. Being visible. It is important for the candidate, a surrogate for the candidate, or a member of the Party to be visible in base communities both during a campaign cycle as well as during off years. Community events and festivals, organization dinners, neighborhood markets and fairs are key venues for visibility.
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CHAPTER NINE
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One easy way to start setting your targets is to determine who you WONT be turning out on Election Day. Those people include: People who are going to vote against you. People who might vote against you. People who will absolutely vote for you and would show up. to vote for you no matter what.
Right off the bat there are three places you can easily set as targets for GOTV: Households or individuals who live in precincts with high Democratic performance, which are usually in precincts with 65%+ Democratic performance. You can usually exclude people who voted in the primary elections because they are very likely to vote again in the general anyway. Be sure also to exclude the stray Republican voter youve identied who lives in a Democratic neighborhood. People who your campaign IDed during phone banks or canvasses as being for you who usually in precincts performing below 65%+ Democratic performance. Again, you can usually exclude people who voted in the primary. People who live in precincts below 65%+ that are known or suspected to be Democrats based on voter le information.
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Make sure your screening process is not so tight as to make your universe too small and not so loose as to make your universe untrustworthy. Your universe should always be exible given the changing dynamics and resources in a campaign.
What should your GOTV staff organization look like? Field director responsible for developing all programs and developing and meeting budgets. GOTV coordinator responsible for all GOTV logistics and troubleshooting Field organizers responsible for all GOTV activities in a given geographic area (do not overlap). Oversee precinct leaders/captains in their geographic area Voter le manager responsible for production of all GOTV lists. Core constituency organizer(s) responsible for all specialized GOTV into traditional democratic base communities (does not overlap with eld organizers day to day role). Volunteer coordinator Recruits volunteers for all GOTV needs. Campus director Helps set up campus GOTV operations. Phone bank and visibility captains Responsible for lling and managing a given phone bank. Responsible for recruiting for and sending people out on visibility.
Keep your structure horizontal, disciplined and accountable someone should be responsible for everything in a given geographic area. Communicate daily on your planning hold a GOTV meeting once a day for 15-20 minutes beginning at least three weeks out. Some of these positions can be lled with super volunteers. Voter Contact Manual 2004 CHAPTER 9 59
Precinct Leaders/Captains
A precinct captain is responsible for carrying out all GOTV ground activities in a given precinct. Your campaign should start identifying precinct captains as early as possible, even if thats a year before the election. Ask each precinct captains to sign a pledge that he or she will do the following: 1. Phone he or she precinct ve to seven days before the election to indroduce themselves to voters and ask if they need any help getting to the polls. 2. Knock on the doors of all known or suspected Democratic households in his or her precinct on the weekend before election Day. 3. Take Election Day off for executing GOTV in his or her precinct.
Volunteers
Begin recruiting volunteers for GOTV weekend months out. While volunteers can ll holes where you dont have precinct captains on Election Day, dont confuse their responsibilities with those of precinct captains. You should, however, also ask volunteers to take Election Day off from their regular jobs. Keep a sign-up chart on the wall so you can measure volunteer activism for GOTV weekend, and so the volunteers can see that the weekend is critical and they are needed. You will need volunteers to: Manage and staff phone banks (Saturday through Election Day). Go door-to-door (Saturday through Election Day). Give rides to the polls (Election Day). Increase visibility through events and other opportunities (Saturday through Election Day).
Accountability
Put an accountability system into your plan to answer the following questions: How will you track staff progress on recruiting volunteers, precinct captains, completed GOTV phone calls and door knocks? How will you track precinct captain progress on door knocking and phoning?
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Communication
Hold weekly staff meetings one to two months out. Begin daily staff meetings at least three weeks out. Put out bi-weekly eld bulletins via e-mail and/or fax to all allies updating them on logistics, planning, and timing of GOTV activities. Start this at least one month out.
Training
You need to start training your staff for Election Day at least four weeks before Election Day. Go over responsibilities, staff structure. Go over programming and what Election Weekend and Election Day will look like. Go over GOTV meeting schedule and precinct captain trainings You should begin training your precinct captains at least two to three weeks before Election Day. Pass out precinct captain kits (lists, Election Day reporting instructions, etc). Go over what is expected of them. Go over Election Day procedures.
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Election Day Hits Are Your Most Important! In an urban, densely populated area your GOTV hits just before Election Day may look like this: Two-three mail hits (week before, four days before, day before) One door visit Saturday or Sunday before One phone call the Sunday before One phone call the Monday before One door visit w/door hanger Monday eve/night Election Day (the most important hits) two door visits, two phone calls
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Field/Volunteer tactics
Volunteer phone banks Volunteer phone banks are extremely cheap and very personal. However, you will need tons of volunteers to have a successful phone bank. When using a volunteer phone bank for GOTV, dont be afraid to overlap with your paid calls. But be sure to keep the volunteer phone bank and the paid phone bank in separate locations. Volunteer door-to-door canvassing Volunteer door-to-door canvassing is a must on Election Weekend and a HUGE must on Election Day. It is very personal, and very inexpensive. But be advised. you will need even more volunteers than you do for phone banks. Rides to the polls Rides to the polls are especially important if you have a large number of senior voters in your universe. Call all seniors in your GOTV universe seven to 10 days before Election Day to ask them if they need a ride. If a voter says yes, inform him or her that someone local will call back the weekend before Election Day to arrange a time. Dont wait for them to call you or assume someone is taking care of this. Nothing is worse than promising someone a ride to the polls and then not delivering. Door-hangers Place door-hangers on door knobs of houses in high Democratic performance areas on the Monday night before Election Day. Include the number to call for rides to the polls and poll location on the hangers if possible. But be careful this can be hard to pull off. If you put the wrong poll information on the doorhangers you could cost yourself valuable votes! Use door-hangers on Election Day when door-to-door canvassers nd no one home leave a personal note, a cell phone number, and poll information. Visits to the base communities and core constituents. Organize events and visits to where your core constituent constituencies are going to be on Election Weekend. Good places are churches, nightspots, union halls, campuses, plant gates, etc. This is great for when nothing else is happening late night, Sunday mornings, early mornings. Campus GOTV Recruit dorm captains who can play a role similar to precinct captains. Dorm captains can be a little more creative on college campuses. This includes chalking, signing, etc. College students also are helpful for building crowds at weekend rallies.
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Rallies Rallies stir up the core constituency and get attention from the media. They also bring people in and then send them out to work, or, in base communities where early vote is a possibility, to rally the troops who then go vote. Core constituent vote media These are useful for sending out invitations to vote. Your campaign should use radio ads, newspaper ads, and TV/cable ads on base community focused media as part of your plan to energize constituencies. Visibility Visibility tactics are only useful in high Democratic performance areas. This may go without saying by now, but NEVER DO VISIBILITY IN REPUBLICAN AREAS. Its like inviting your obnoxious neighbors to your party. You dont want any Republicans showing up and ruining your Election Day! Beginning a week out, during drive times, it is important to build momentum toward Election Day. Visibility on Election Day is more than waving signs. Go to bus stops, malls, stores, downtowns, neighborhoods, union plants, etc. Make noise and talk to people about going to vote. Again, go only where Democrats hang out.
Hold rallies that turn into work days on the Saturday and Sunday before Election Day. Rally in the early morning and then the folks attending can hit the doors for a few hours. Information is essential. Some people dont vote because they do not know how or where. Communicate to voters their polling places, the phone number they can call for voting information, and volunteer info everywhere you can, every time you can. When talking to a friendly voter, always insert this sentence into phone script You know this is going to be an extremely close election, please, please get your fellow Democratic friends, family and neighbors to join you at the polling place. When phoning for GOTV always, always leave messages to remind people to vote, where their polling locations are, and the phone number for voting information.
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By now you should have the following completed: The plan written, the staff and precinct leaders trained. Critical decisions made about how to allocate your time, money, and resources in the nal. Everyone is on the same page. No doubts about what each person (from staff to allies to candidates to volunteers) is doing beginning at sun-up on the Saturday before Election Day. All lists in the hands of the people who need them. GOTV mail dropped and one or two pieces already in mailboxes Budget allowing, a paid call to voters on Thursday or Friday. Calls for rides to the polls ready to be made. Signs and literature in place. Phone banks ready. Drive time visibility continuing from the week before. The ballots, machines, and systems are understood. Sample ballots prepared. You have done everything you can to protect the vote.
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10:00 a.m. 9:00 p.m. Volunteer phone, phone, phone as many Democratic households as possible. 9:00 p.m. Staff GOTV meeting. GIVE YOURSELF A HAND TODAY WAS AWESOME All day - evening Visibility. Where are people congregating? Festivals, Bars, Church picnics, etc. Only go where most people are Democrats.
Sunday
Paid GOTV None unless you have the budget. (Choose Saturday, Monday, Tuesday for paid phones as opposed to Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) Field/Volunteer GOTV Early a.m. Many church visits Noon GOTV rally in base area/send them to work Noon Dark Door knock, door knock as many precincts as possible. If you hit the same ones twice in two days perfect. Noon 9 p.m. Phone, Phone, Phone, If you talk to the people for the 8th *&%$$# time you are doing just right. 9 p.m. Staff GOTV meeting. WE SMELL VICTORY. 9 p.m. wee hours Put as many lawn signs as possible in drive areas ready for morning drive.
Monday
Paid GOTV Last mail piece is fully delivered. Paid GOTV live call hits all day. Field/Volunteer Early a.m. 9:00 9:00 p.m. 10:00 a.m. Done 10:30 a.m. Lunch, After Work After dark
Drive time visibility Phone, phone, phone Place door hangers in high dem areas. Campus rallies Drive time visibility More signs go up for tomorrows drive time. Put VOTE TODAY stickers on signs.
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Dont worry about contacting voters too many times. You never know when youre nally going to break through and get someone to the polls who wasnt planning to vote. Your eld organizers need to track whether or not precinct captains are door-knocking their precincts. If they are not, you can send out volunteers.
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An Election Day plan may look like this: Visibility Precinct Captains make rst door knock pass through precinctsand phone everyone on their lists. 9:00 11:00 a.m. Blanket phone banks and door-to-door work is going as volunteers come to Shipping. 10:30 11:00 a.m. Precinct captains report numbers to boiler room and then go back to it. 11:00 11:30 a.m. Boiler Room decides where forces are weak and calls Shipping. Shipping dispatches door-to-door volunteers and phone banks to weak precincts. 11:00 a.m. 3:30 p.m. Precinct captains continue door-to-door and phoning their lists. 3:30 4:00 p.m. Precinct captains report. 4:00 4:30 p.m. Boiler Room processes information and calls shipping. Shipping dispatches new volunteers. 4:30 8:00 p.m. Hit, hit and hit every door and phone. Early a.m. 9:00 10:30 a.m.
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Keep in mind the following tips to get the most out of your precinct captains: Only give them lists of sporadic voters. Do not give them every Democrat. If they get the majority of the sporadic-voting Democrats, youll win. Do not let them come back to the HQ until after the polls have closed. They can make calls from their homes or from their cell phones. Pair them in twostwo people per two precincts. This makes it more fun. At 7:59 p.m. in high turnout areas, ask them to return to their polls to prevent people who are already in line from leaving. Polls are not allowed to close until everyone who is in line before closing time is allowed to vote.
Budgeting
You can plan the best party in town, but if you cant afford it, all of your planning wont be put to use. If you want to have a winning Election Day, make sure youve budgeted carefully. The budget is one of the three things that should affect your GOTV plan. Three things should drive GOTV plans: Do we have a large enough pool of voters to win? Do we have enough human resources working on our campaign? Do we have the budget?
A GOTV budget can be expensive. In most cases it will probably be and should be the largest expense in your eld/voter contact budget. It should be noted that even the volunteer-driven parts of your GOTV plan (precinct captain operations, phone banks, canvassing, etc.) still cost money. Feeding your volunteers costs money. Acquiring lists costs money. Trainings cost money. All told, its more cost effective than having to pay people to perform these roles, but dont think that, because they are volunteer-driven, they are free.
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In the end, your budget should take into account every aspect of GOTV. Many campaigns incur huge debt because their GOTV plans did not budget for all GOTV needs. Cost Estimates: Paid GOTV live phones Paid GOTV auto calls Mail (party rate) Mail (non-party rate) Door hangers Door knock/lit piece Yard signs Match back $.40 per completed calls (includes messages) $.13 per connect $.30 per piece (includes postage) $.37 per piece (includes postage) $.08 per piece $.18 per piece $2.50 per sign This cost needs to be factored in for VBM programming get quote from County Elections Ofces.
GOTV budget items: Leaseback volunteer phone Put about $250 per phone bank in your budget (never use for long distance). GOTV staff Some people may be on GOTV staff or may come under Field Staff. If they are hired just for GOTV put them here. You need paper, and lots of it. This covers precinct captain mailings, fax communication, etc. This covers food and taking care of volunteers. Rallies cost money. Put this in your budget. Election Day will throw a few emergencies your way. Have a fund to deal with them.
Volunteer costs
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Appendices
Candidate Kitchen Cabinet Manager Deputy Manager Administrative Comptroller Volunteers Coordinator Volunteers Finance Director Treasurer Fundraising Consultants Field Director Regional Director Fundraising Staff Field Staff
Scheduler
Trackers
Note: This organizational chart should be used only as a guide. Larger campaigns will need to create additional staff positions, while smaller campaigns may be able to fill some of these positions with volunteers.
Administrative Staff Responsible for ensuring that all aspects of the campaign are running smoothly. Communications Director Works with the Campaign Manager to devise an overall press plan, including long-range planning and event media, speechwriting and scheduling and advance. Comptroller Audits the campaign and regulates all nances. Field Organization Contacts, identies and mobilizes voters for Election Day.
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Finance Director/Treasurer Writes and implements a nance plan that tracks money by method and date, and ensures that all legalities are met. Fundraising Consultant Supplements the on-staff fund-raising operation by organizing events with representatives of PACs or other interest groups with supportive constituencies. Fundraising Staff Sets fund-raising goals and gures out how to meet them, prepares materials to distribute to donors and plans fund-raising events. Kitchen Cabinet The candidates team of personal advisors. Mail Consultant Produces persuasion mail to complement other paid media. Manager Makes all strategic and tactical decisions; oversees budget, cash ow and daily management of operations. Media Consultant Creates television and radio advertising based on information about persuadable voters, the candidates record and that of his or her opponent. Pollster Conducts polls that will be used to target voters and develop efcient messages. Press Secretary In charge of day-to-day event planning and interaction with the media. Researcher Gathers information to be used in campaign materials, collects background on the candidate and their opponent and veries accuracy of everything put out by the campaign. Scheduler Determines which invitations the candidate accepts by balancing the demands for the candidates time. Trackers Staff dedicated to tracking press coverage of the candidate. Volunteer Coordinator Consults with all divisions of the campaign to best utilize volunteer resources. Volunteers Can be used in all aspects of the campaign.
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Completed
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Code each household at the end of the interaction, based on what they tell you when you ask them about the candidate. 2. The Tally Sheet. This sheet should be marked at every door you hit. Youll note if someone answered, how many people you spoke with, and how they felt about your candidate. Youll also track if theyre interested in doing anything additional for the campaign, or need more information. 3. The Volunteer Badge. Wear your badge, which will identify you as a campaign volunteer.
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WHAT TO SAY Remember, youre a personal representative of the candidate. The words you say and the impression you make will have a big effect on the voters decision. Heres an outline of the canvassing message. Youll need to go over it a few times to get it down in your own words. The most persuasive thing about your one-on-one interaction with a voter is that you, as a member of the same community, have a strong opinion on who to vote for. So you should feel free to adapt this script a little bit so that it feels comfortable for you, and so you are communicating the most important facts: you are from the neighborhood or the district, you are volunteering your time in support of a candidate you rmly believe is the right choice, and you are here on our candidates behalf to try to answer and questions the voter might have and to ask, in person, for their vote. You will be more likely to earn a vote if you can make a friendly personal connection. 1. Identify yourself. _______(voter)_____, my name is ----__________, and Im a volunteer for -- _(candidate)_,whos running for Congress. May I speak with you for just a moment? 2. Talk about the candidate. Were helping _(candidate)_because _(candidate)_is an honest candidate with a good record of helping the consumer. We think _(candidate)_is one of the few candidates we can trust these days. 80 Voter Contact Manual 2004 APPENDICES/LINKS
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Street Address ___________________________City ______________Zip _______ The attitude of this person is: Favorable----_______ Unfavorable_______ Undecided_______ Question or Request: ______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________
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DOOR-TO-DOOR EVALUATION Today 1. 2. Houses Visited Not at Home % (of Houses Visited) 3. At Home % (of Houses Visited) 4. Favorables % (of At-Homes) 5. Undecideds % (of At-Homes) 6. Unfavorables % (of At-Homes) Cumulative
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2. If the voter is rated 4, thank him or her and hang up. 3. Discuss issues only when necessary and preferably with undecided voters when they volunteer opinions; determine what they feel is important and note it on the sheet. 4. Do not use a combination of numbers when rating one voter. 5. When ending the call remember to thank each person you spoke with. 6. Turn in completed sheets when nished.
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Second Call: Election Day morning Hello, Mr./Mrs./Ms. ______________? This is ______________, and I am calling for (insert candidate name). TODAY is Election Day, and the election will be very close. (Insert candidate name) will really need your vote, can we offer you a ride to the polls? IF YES: Fill out a slip and give it to the appropriate person. IF NO: As you know, you vote at (insert polling location), and you can vote today until _____________. Please vote today. Thank you. IF VOTED: Thanks for voting! Mark on call sheet. Third Call: Election Day afternoon, early evening Hello, Mr./Mrs./Ms. ______________? This is ______________, and I am calling for (insert candidate name). TODAY is Election Day, and the polls close at _____________. (Insert candidate name) really needs your vote, can we give you a ride to the polls? IF YES: Fill out a slip and give it to the appropriate person. IF NO: There are only _______ minutes/hours left before the polls close. Your polling location is: (insert polling location). Thank you. IF VOTED: Thanks for voting. Mark on the sheet.
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NCEC Sample
Courtesy of NCEC
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5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Example: 2,500 Volunteer I.D. Calls 2,500 x .6 households = 1,500 1,500 x .6 phone match = 900 900 x .70% contact rate = 630 phone calls ID script with four questions (two candidates/two issues) = 12 per hour Can call for 22 hours a week (M-Th/three hours, S/S-ve hours) One phone can make 12 contacts every hour 22 hours to call x 12 contacts per hour = 264 contacts To complete the calls in 22 hours, you need to make 630 contacts divide 630/264 = 2.38 (3) phones going 9. For volunteers you have three seats for 22 hours 10. You need to recruit at least six people for each seat for 22 hours (double the number of volunteers). 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
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DOOR-TO-DOOR Example: 2,500 doors to knock 2,500 x .6 households = 1,500 Contact eight households per hour (vary depending on neighborhood) Canvass for 10 hours per week (Sat/six hours, Sun/four hours) 10 hours x eight contacts per hour = 80 contacts To complete the canvass in 10 hours, you divided 1500/80 = 18.75 (19) You need 19 people hours for all 10 hours You need to recruit at least 38 people VOTER CONTACT BUDGETING FORMULAS Vote-By-Mail Application call eight per hour Ballot collection eight per hour Reminder to send in ballot 20 per hour Early Vote Early Vote Reminder 12 per hour Door-to-Door Canvass eight per hour Knock-n-drop 12 Lit drop 30/50 hour depending on the geography Petition collection 10 per hour/more during heavy trafc times GOTV GOTV calls 20 per hour Scheduling rides to the polls eight to ten per hour Giving rides to the polls six hour (depends) Election day y squads Depends on the terrain and time of day
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IF YES: (Fill out service slip/ Q slip and give it to the appropriate person) IF NO: OK, but please vote before_________. There are only _______ minutes left to vote. You vote at ___________. Thank you Mr. Mrs./Ms. ________, Goodbye. IF VOTED: Thanks for voting. Mark on sheet.
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Glossary
Activist List Lists of activists obtained from friendly organizations that can later be called upon to disseminate a message quickly via word of mouth. Alternative voting laws Early voting, Vote-by-Mail and same day registration. All these provide alternatives to going to a polling location on Election Day, giving more opportunities for voters to cast their ballots. Automated calls See vendor auto. Base vote The foundation of voters who can be counted on to vote in your favor. This base vote includes precincts with voters with 65% or higher voting performance over the last three election cycles for the same type of election as your candidates. Boiler room The headquarters on Election Day that consists mostly of the numbers people. This is where your reports from the eld are sent and processed. Budgeting A formal nance plan for the election. Campus director A member of the GOTV staff responsible for setting up college campus operations and campaigning. Canvassing Going door to door to speak with voters. Community outreach Programs and events that focus on relating and working with the constituency community. Core constituencies Voters who always vote and should be naturally inclined to vote in your candidates favor.
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Core constituency vote director A member of the campaign staff who ensures that the core constituency (the base) supports the campaign and turns out on Election Day. Core constituent vote media Targeted messages to your core constituency. Data management The task of keeping track of your voters and the campaigns goals. Democratic performance The average percentage a Democratic candidate may get in the jurisdiction you are targeting. You can determine this gure by calculating the average percentage of the Democrat in the race over three to four elections. Demographic targeting Selecting voters to attempt to persuade, based off their voting record. Door-hangers Voting reminders and information about the candidate placed on voters house doors. Early vote director A member of the campaign staff who maximizes early vote laws to turn out as many voters as possible before Election Day. Expected vote The number of people expected to vote in the current election. Field director The campaign staffer responsible for the voter contact operation. Field organizer A member of the campaign staff who administers a voter contact program. Field organizing The work of contacting voters directly. Geographic targeting The act of determining which voters your campaign will contact, based on data arranged by geographical region and voting performance. GOTV Get Out The Vote. Typically the last weekend before an election, at which point you mobilize your base and give a nal push to your persuadable voters. GOTV index The actual number of Democrats in a precinct who do not vote in every election, and need to be targeted for Election Day.
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GOTV Plan A strategy for getting out the vote, or grassroots work, that includes such components as setting your targets, setting up your organization, setting your tactics, pre-Election Day planning, executing your plan on Election Day, and budgeting. High Democratic performance precincts Precincts with a 65 percent and above Democratic Performance. Most base voters live within high Democratic Performance precincts. Internet organizing Mobilizing your supporters online. Organizing on the Internet allows you to build communities to support your candidate. Leaeting Distributing campaign literature throughout high trafc areas, such as grocery stores and mass transit stops. Literature distribution Leaving campaign literature at the front entrance of a voters home. Also called a lit drop. Low Democratic performance precincts Precincts with a Democratic Performance of lower than 45 percent. Most Republican voters live in these precincts. Mail Targeted direct mailings delivering message and information to voters. Motor voter laws Laws enacted in the mid-1990s that enable citizens to register to vote while they complete routine tasks such as registering their cars or ling for changes of address. NCEC The National Committee for an Effective Congress. The NCEC produces targeting data used in many campaigns. Numbers people People who understand and appreciate the importance of data. These people should work in the Boiler Room on Election Day. Paid auto calls Method of reaching and persuading voters by delivering a targeted, automated message via telephone. Paid live phoning Method of reaching voters by employing a representative to call targeted voters directly. Paid tactics Methods of reaching voters that must be paid for such as paid live phoning, paid auto phoning, and mail.
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Persuadable voters Voters who do not necessarily lean for you or against your candidate. In eld operations, these are your targeted voters. Persuasion call Directly speaking with a voter via telephone, in order to convince him or her to vote for your candidate on Election Day. Persuasion index/percentage The actual number of voters in a precinct who are ticket-splitters. Phone bank The group of people making calls on the campaigns behalf. Phone bank coordinator A member of the campaign staff who manages the phone contact operations. Phone vendors Consulting rms that provide paid phone banks to candidates. Precinct captain A member of the campaign staff who oversees operations at a polling location on Election Day. Regional eld director A member of the campaign staff who oversees eld operations for a particular region. Registration The total number of registered voters in a particular precinct, town, county or state. Specialty press Press that is geared to specic audiences outside of the mainstream press circles; therefore the message tends to be tailored and often biased toward those audiences. Steering committees The bringing together of a broad range of leaders and organizers from a particular constituency for discussion and outreach. Swing precincts Precincts with a 45 to 65 percent Democratic Performance. These are where most of your persuadable voters live. Targeting The act of identifying and honing in on your core constituency and therefore creating a campaign tailored to that audience. Ticket splitters Those who do not vote along Party lines. Turnout percent The percentage of registered voters who have voted in similar elections in past years.
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Vendor auto A call paid for by the campaign, in which a message recorded through a consulting rm is sent via phone to voters. Also referred to as a robo-call. Vendor live A call paid for by the campaign, in which a consultant speaks with the voter live over the phone. Visibility Tactic of getting out your message using such methods as posting signs, postings, sign waving, and handing out iers. Visibility captains The member of the GOTV staff responsible for recruiting and sending people out on visibility including posting and holding signs. Volunteer live A call made to a voter by a campaign volunteer. Volunteer tactics As opposed to paid techniques, methods used by volunteers to contact voters to disseminate messages and information on voting. Vote decit The number of additional votes youll need to win. Vote goal worksheet A calculation sheet that allows you to determine the number of persuadable votes youll need to win the election. Vote rallies An event held to encourage voting. Voter le manager A member of the campaign staff who keeps track of the voter les and helps to determine the best areas to target.
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