ELECTION: HERE ARE “REAL LIFE” THINGS YOU CAN DO TO SAVE OUR NATION THIS FALL!
Retired Federal Attorney
From Gary Sampliner
Gary is a retired federal attorney who is heading up election efforts for a small DC area social action organization called JAMAAT (Jews and Muslims and Allies Acting Together).
Election 2020: Some Ways to Get Involved
- Mass texting. This is a means of voter outreach that it is a lot of fun and effective in getting the message out and having conversations with many voters in a short period of time — and great for those with strong aversions to talking to strangers on the phone. Although some training is needed for this, mass texting can be learned within an hour, and anyone can pick up how it is done within a short time of starting to do the actual texts. Organizations use programs that allow volunteers to send a pre-written text message out to voters through their computers in batches of 200-1000, which can be done in no more than 2-4 minutes. On average, 10-20% will answer, some immediately and others trickling in over the next few hours. Volunteers can then engage with many of these voters, usually through a wide variety of scripted answers which mostly cover the waterfront of responses they receive, and sometimes result in more creative and substantive conversations. You can complete all of your conversations for a batch in 60-90 minutes, with occasional check-ins for a few responses that trickle in over the next 48 hours. The voters only get your first name and don’t have your phone number or further information about you. You can get going in doing mass texts that reach 1000 voters at a time and result in many substantive discussions through the People’s Action Network, which is now sending over a million texts a week to voters in key swing states, by clicking here:
- Phone banking. While phone banking has its rewards and occasional frustrations, it has been found to be the most effective means of engaging voters other than door-to-door canvassing. Most campaigns now use electronic dialers, to dial quickly and allow callers to speak only to people who answer, and they also usually provide a script to use and adapt to their own words. While there can be many wrong numbers and occasional confrontations, many of the phone banks target likely friendly groups of people (e.g. Dem voters who we encourage to come out and get or submit ballots). In this year of COVID, phone bankers are finding that the proportion of lonely people who will pick up the phone and talk is increasing.
- Writing post cards. A great outreach technique for the worst technophobes! A nationally known non-partisan campaign called Reclaim Our Vote has sent over 5 million post cards, primarily to deregistered (purged from the rolls) voters of color in swing states, urging recipients to register and to vote, and provide needed contact info, and is looking to send out many more as soon as possible, before shifting its efforts to phone banking and texting. (https://actionnetwork.org/forms/reclaim-our-vote-signup). Reclaim Our Vote is also one of the few campaign-related organizations that houses of worship and other 501(c)(3) organizations can participate in, and to which people can make tax-deductible contributions, because it is non-partisan (it does not search out voters by party registration). Its parent organization, Center for Common Ground, is itself a 501(c)(3) organization. Another group called Postcards to Voters (https://postcardstovoters.org/) writes post cards to Democratic leaning voters in swing states around the country. The group has a few openings in a local chapter in the DC area where one of our JAMAAT members is active, and they get together in periodic friendly Zoom meetings to write post cards and get to know each other. Please contact us at JAMAAT if you are interested.
- Writing Letters. Another great outlet for the tech-challenged. An organization called Vote Forward, https://votefwd.org, is working with groups such as Swing Left to have volunteers write 10 million letters to infrequent Democratic voters in swing states, to send shortly before the election to remind them to vote. They have had past success with their strategy, because recipients are likely to open the handwritten, personally addressed letters that remind people to vote shortly before the election. This year, they have decided to send their letters out on October 17.
- Organizing friends and family. We all know that individuals have far more influence on people they know than on strangers. The Biden campaign has come up with a training program and app called Vote Joe, available on the App Store, to help organize friends and family, which seems particularly useful for young people with infrequently voting friends or people with friends and family who need to be acquainted with basic facts on the issues. The app allows users to help figure out whom to target, by providing access to publicly available voting data to show how frequently any person has voted and (depending on the state) the party for which they registered, and provides easily accessible information on the major issues of concern to voters. For the next of the training programs that shows how to use the app and more, see https://www.mobilize.us/2020victory/?address=20850&lat=39.0839994&lon=-77.1527813.
In addition, MoveOn has put together a Mobilize to Win program that provides a framework for how to reach friends and family effectively in the 17 key battleground states for the Presidential and Senate elections and getting them and people in their networks to vote: https://front.moveon.org/mobilize-to-win/.
- Poll watching and voter assistance hotlines. With all the news about Republican efforts at voter suppression and massive disqualification of votes, Democratic groups have sprung up to resist such efforts through voter education and poll observation. You can get involved with the Biden campaign as a poll observer by clicking here, be trained on how to answer questions on the Biden campaign’s National Voter Assistance hotline by clicking here, and become involved as a nonpartisan Election Protection volunteer, supported by many of our country’s best-known non-partisan election protection organizations, by clicking here.
- Giving money. You are all deluged with requests for donations that seem to come from every organization on Earth, each of which professes to be the one in greatest need of your money. This document will not endorse giving to any of the worthy organizations listed here over any others. But if you have money to donate to one or more political campaigns, and you care about particular issues, you can increase the impact of your contribution by donating through a PAC of an interest group whose positions on your issue of concern are supported by that group. One organization to consider, for anyone interested in promoting an equitable two-state solution in Israel and Palestine, is the J Street PAC, https://jstreet.org/about-us/about-jstreetpac/#.X0gfNMhKg2w. In its 12 years that it has been in existence, this group has hired some of the savviest people on the Hill, which has helped propel J Street into becoming one of the most successful Jewish organizations in Washington. One service they offer, if you wish to donate to Senate or House campaigns but could use some guidance on which campaigns are most in need of money that can make a difference, is to consult with their resident expert on this subject, Capital/South Assistant Regional Director Mike Fox, mike@jstreet.org. You will need to become a member of J Street through its web site in order to donate through the PAC, at no financial obligation. All monies donated through the PAC will go directly to the designated candidate.
- Organizations doing various types of voter outreach
- 2020 Victory (mobilize.us/2020victory/) is the website for the DNC, for both the Biden/Harris campaign and downballot campaigns in battleground states. Here you can get text training (required before doing any texting on their campaigns), phone banking, and different types of organizing, and then sign up for particular phone banking, texting, and get out the vote events to all manner of targeted audiences.
- Moms Demand Action on Gun Sense has a very active Maryland chapter coordinating postcarding for Spanberger and Luria (the two likely close congressional races in our area) and for Reclaim Our Vote, as well as texting (currently with 2020 Victory) and phone banking. They do frequent small group Zoom parties in connection with their events, led by their experienced team heads, to give tips, conversation, and offer incentives like campaign swag for frequent participants. You can contact them through the Moms Demand Action – MD Facebook page or you can e-mail mocomomselections@gmail.com.
- Seed the Vote, https://www.everydaypeoplepac.org/seedthevote/, a Bay Area-organized campaign of progressive organizations, is teaming with groups from AZ, PA, and FL to do phone-banking and texting to those critical states each day of the week. Their partner organizations feature a “deep canvassing” technique to try to understand the concerns of infrequent and swing voters, to get back to them with answers to questions they cannot handle from initial questions, and to refer people in need of resources to helping institutions.
- Powered by People is a PAC started and led by Beto O’Rourke, which makes calls to Texas Democrats and people of color: see https://map.betoorourke.com/ Its phone banks feature 1 or 2 weekly 2-hour sessions that start with a Zoom conference with inspirational remarks led by Beto himself, and feature both an automatic dialer I’ve found works very well and a good supportive staff who can help with issues while calls are ongoing.
- Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, the progressive Jewish organization that focuses on domestic issues such as racial justice, immigration, and the environment, is running a Vote Out Fear campaign (https://www.bendthearc.us/vote_out_fear_pb), doing phone banking and text banking aimed at swing Jewish voters (initially in Florida and Georgia, now expanded to include six other key states).
- Turnout 2020, https://turnout2020.org/, a program of a coalition of left-leaning groups called the Progressive Turnout Project, primarily makes calls to infrequent Democratic swing state voters to urge them to take action, normally on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They are currently calling Arizona and Pennsylvania voters to encourage that they request a vote-by-mail ballot, with talking points to help voters understand options.
- JAMAAT (Jews and Muslims and Allies Acting Together) is a small grass roots organization in the DC area that focuses on fighting Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, as well as on issues like immigration, preventing gun violence, and the environment. Its members have been working with all of the groups listed here. Interested people can participate in our next virtual organizing meeting on Sunday, October 4 at 7:00 pm EDT, for which they should register at http://bit.ly/jamaat2020. Any questions should be referred to gsampliner@gmail.com.
- Reclaim our Vote, https://actionnetwork.org/forms/reclaim-our-vote-signup, which will be pivoting later in September from post card writing to phone and text banking, and they have useful training courses coming up to help hesitant phone bankers, some on Mondays and some at other times.
- Grassroots Democrats (https://grassrootsdems.org/) is a California-based organization that has gone national and participates in phone banking and texting campaigns in most of the battleground states. They have a well-organized website to hook interested people into phone banking and texting opportunities, as well as training, in battleground state races of their choice, and good links to other key websites to get brief summaries of the candidates; background and positions.
- NextGen America (https://nextgenamerica.org/2020-plan/ or https://www.mobilize.us/nextgen/) employs text banks, phone banks, and other social media strategies to target young people (ages 18-35) less likely to vote in 11 battleground states.
o Changing the Conversation (ctctogether.org) is a group that is doing both telephone and (under a strict protocol) door-to-door canvassing, focusing on Pennsylvania. They train people extensively in “deep canvassing,” which has worked to persuade reluctant voters to vote and change the minds of least the less ardent Trump supporters, not by using facts and arguments but by story-telling, building empathy, and getting voters to tell their own stories that can cause them to convince themselves to come out to vote and vote our way.
o Environmental Voter Project (https://www.environmentalvoter.org/) is a non-partisan organization that uses big-data analytics to identify inactive environmentalists in battleground states and then through its phone banks and text banks, applies cutting-edge behavioral science to turn them into more consistent voters.
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This November, vote like your life and our nation depend open it. Becauise they do!
PWS
10-03-20