Pic unrelated, sadly :(

This is a follow up to an effort post I made about how Democrats run campaigns: https://hexbear.net/post/3640289

I find myself knee-deep in a campaign job on the eve of another big Presidential election. Our schedule today is 8am to 8pm, and then tomorrow starts at 6am and doesn’t end until probably sometime Wednesday. But hey, they pay me and I need money to survive under Capitalism

The Final Five

The campaigns are in a mode known as either GOTV (Get-Out-The-Vote) or “The Final Five”. We have something like 1,600 hours of work scheduled out across the team for these last couple of days. Everyone is out knocking on thousands of doors per hour trying to convince the people who didn’t vote early to Make A Plan to vote tomorrow.

Why you should always vote

• Campaigns completely ignore non-voters - We don’t have the time nor the capacity to knock on every single door. That means the people we try to reach are typically in the “occasionally votes” and “might be a Democrat” range of targets. People that the data models consider will not vote and will not vote for Democrats get left out.

• Undervotes are noticed more than non-votes - If you are a non-voter you end up in the blob of people that campaigns completely ignore. We just think you don’t care and aren’t worth the effort to talk to. However, show up and leave a bunch of races blank on your ballot. That IS something campaigns notice. That’s called an “undervote” and is most noticeable when it happens to “top of ballot” candidates such as President and Governor.

• The harassment stops when you vote - As soon as you vote, all of the campaigns in GOTV mode are going to remove you from their lists as soon as their early vote data updates. No more texts or phone calls or libs at your door! Some orgs (OK, a LOT of orgs) have terrible data hygiene and will still text you, but for the most part campaigns will leave you alone.

• Third parties need your support - The game is rigged against us, but through voting we get a tiny amount of influence on elections. If a third party gets 5% of the national popular vote, they get federal matching funds for the next Presidential election. That means you could see a Green Party with a $120 million war chest in 2028! Maybe they’ll run a serious campaign with serious cash behind them! Or vote and get some actual numbers for socialists.

Boiler rooms

Tomorrow I get to sit in a room in a private location and handle all of the election day BS all day. Boiler Rooms are staff areas where all of the major staffers that aren’t out in the field stay and watch results, handle any last minute issues on the ground, makes sure everyone is where they are supposed to be, and handles reporting. It’s utterly exhausting and a non-stop dash until polls close. Wish me luck :/

All of this is so temporary. Much like Spirit Halloween is there to rent out every empty retail space for 3 months a year, campaigns love renting out some empty offices. All of this gets built up over a few months and then the leases are up, everything gets torn down, all the unused “lit” (flyers, posters, “make a plan” cards, etc.) is disposed of, and then everyone goes home to do it all again in 2 years.

Voter Protection

One of the big things campaigns do that’s actually kind of a good thing. I don’t care who wins tomorrow. It’s going to be hilarious either way and we’re getting genocide and fascism no matter what

…but I really care about making sure the election is run well and fairly. Maybe it’s one of the last liberal brain worms crawling around my skull, but it pisses me off how voting machines just happen to stop working or poll workers just happen to have the wrong info or there’s some other BS at polling places where young people, POC, and other non-white people go vote.

It happens every time! That’s where Voter Protection comes in. Did you see a “call this number if you have issues” sign at your polling place? That’s a hotline that goes to an org doing this work. There’s a network of Democratic orgs that run voter protection hotlines. Republicans never do these.

Issues like long lines, problems with voter IDs, bad instructions at the polling places, and voter intimidation gets handles by these teams. Typically these “flags” turn into phone calls to the local Board Of Elections, but for the more serious issues the state’s ACLU gets called in. ACLU will write some harsh letters telling people to cut it out and follow the law, and if things escalate from there lawsuits start to get filed.

The Democrats are actually trying to win

I know it’s a common sentiment on this site that Dems are trying to blow the election. Maybe the ones in D.C. are being idiots on purpose, but from where I sit this just isn’t true. There’s a lot of people who are VERY serious and passionate about getting elected. They love her. There are people working this job that are well-off or comfortable enough, yes, but there are also people who are poor and doing this because it pays more than fast food. Maybe tomorrow will be a chance for me to radicalize some of these folks. IDK. I’m here because I’m good at it, the pay is good enough, and it’s nice to be in a job I know how to do for a change.