527 GOTV tactics

From dKosopedia

Category: 2004 elections

This article is intended to be an analysis of the coordination of progressive 527s during the 2004 presidential election GOTV effort. It is inspired by this diary. As material is accumulated, we hope to have a page dedicated to each organization in every one of the battleground states.

In general there was no common database including phone lists for the organizations in the coalition to call through.

=America Votes= America Votes was the coordinating organization for the election weekend activities. They included: ACORN, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, America Coming Together (ACT), American Federation of Teachers, Association of Trial Lawyers of America, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence United With the Million Mom March, Clean Water Action, Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, Democracy for America, EMILY's List, Environment2004, The Human Rights Campaign, League of Conservation Voters, The Media Fund, MoveOn.org Voter Fund, Moving America Forward, Music for America, NAACP National Voter Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Education Association, National Jewish Democratic Council, National Treasury Employees Union, Partnership for America's Families, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, SEIU, Sierra Club, USAction, Voices for Working Families, Young Voter Alliance and the 21st Century Democrats. They were responsible for the staging sites, much of the logistics, and staffing. They did some volunteer recruitment.

==Pittsburgh, PA== Staff: Dominated by SEIU employees. Tactics: Goal was to canvass through all of the targeted and flush districts at least once before election day. Secondary goal was to put a Go Vote doorhanger on each door. Election day: teams typically numbering 4 volunteers or paid canvasser were sent out to walk an individual precinct three times. They were also instructed to check in on the polling location and make sure everything was runing smoothly. Each staging location had a lawyer in the event of a problem. Message: vote for change. The canvassers were not according to law allowed to advocate voting for Bush.

==Bethel, PA== Tactics: used lists to canvassed. Lists were fairly accurate, the canvassers high quality and the people they visited were responsive. The training was very light and informal. Data was not collected at the end of the day.

=ACT= ACT spent over $100M for this cycle and was over budget. Their voter registration results were excellent, but other phases of the campaign(GOTV) were were dissorganized. Tactics: Canvassers for the months prior to the election were paid by the number of contacts they made. Data management: ACT inconsistently updated their records. The Palm Pilot system never lived up to expectations.

==Pennsylvania== Election weekend: Efforts on finding paid canvassers. They used vans and trolley cars to transport them from staging sites to precincts. The original plan was to use Nextel walkie talkies to be able to communicate and redeploy people in the field, but it was a logistic nightmare.

===Pittsburgh=== General tactics: ACT made photocopies of the voter registration cards they gathered and called through them up to election day to encourage people to vote. They used barcodes to update their voter database, but it was not always used. Due to the lack of a centralized database they repetatively called the same people and were unable to remove people from their calling lists.

==Portland== General tactics: What volunteers were told would be their task did not always turn out to be the case. In one example, they told people that they would be taking 10 names of newly registered voters to walk through the voting process until they made it to the polls. Instead they had people make cold calls. Results: The turnout was larger, but however the difference can be attributed to the lack of having Nader on the ballot.

=Democracy for America= DFA focused on state and local races.

=MMOB= MMOB organized letter writing to single moms in swing states. The first wave was to send them voter reg forms with stamped, addressed envelopes to send them in with. The second wave was to remind them to vote. One estimate is that they sent out around 500,000. The letters were sent to PA, FL and OH and at one point to W. VA.

=Moveon.org= General tactics: Moveon relied on volunteers to download walk lists of people in their neighborhood to target with canvassing. They were then able to login and update the information on their targets. The lists were also updated as the organization gathered more information about who was registered in the precincts. They also intended to station people at the polling locations to be able to update canvassers in the field as to who had voted already. People report that they started their canvassing late in the day.

Philadelphia

Reports are that the lists used were not particularly good. The logistics for updating the lists on election day were not well thoughout or organized.