Canvassing for Warnock

Canvassing with Warnock 

As a door to door canvasser, your better days are the ones when you get to tell someone at the door something that they might really be able to use.  I canvassed with Warnock last week, and it was definitely a better day.  I had two pieces of useful information.

The first is that I distributed a little calendar of the upcoming runoff special election.  It showed the dates for early voting and gave QR codes for the closest polling place.  I was happy to give out this card, and a handful of people, in the 42 houses I knocked on doors in East Atlanta, were happy to get the information.

But the thing which got the most response was when I told them that if they voted early, their names would drop out of the call-back rosters and that they would get few phone calls and emails!  This seemed to ramp up the enthusiasm for a shortened early voting period.  [As part of the wave of “election integrity” legislation passed by Republicans, the runoff campaign is half as long in its total length, it has fewer days of early voting, fewer drop boxes and has more restrictions on in-person and absentee voting.]

As an enthusiastic canvasser, you have to think about your audience.  If your prospective voter is over 60, it is more likely they want the physical address written down, of which there is a place for on this form.  But most of my younger voters were happy to be directed by the scan code. Thus, I could save the literature, which had the polling places and addresses on it, for the people I spoke with who wanted just that.

The first house I canvassed was one of the fanciest.

We encourage everyone who works for the Flip Project to spend time canvassing, because we want them to know what outreach methods they are outperforming.  Our work on promoting free ride-shares, especially in non-English languages where we have good translators and existing assets will get more people voting than the half dozen Georgia residents I talked with on that brisk morning.