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Summerland: This Is How We Roll in Florida (A Swing State Canvass Diary) [1]

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Date: 2022-08-04

It’s been months since the Florida state legislature passed perhaps the worst gerrymandered maps in the country and just as long since Gov. DeSantis forced the legislature to pass $1 Billion in Debt to taxpayers in Central Florida. You’d think voters would have forgotten. Afterall, Americans have short attention spans. Not about monumental property tax increases, though. Voters are even telling us they don’t know if they will be able to afford to live there in the future. And volunteers from Orange County are even more concerned. Kind of a strange way to start the election season. (If you hadn’t heard, DeSantis wants to run for president and thinks raising taxes on Central Floridians — to promote his anti-woke agenda — is just the key.)

463 volunteers came out on Saturday to knock on doors for Hope Springs from Field PAC. We continue to canvass in Hispanic neighborhoods in Osceola and the Orlando suburbs of Seminole and Volusia Counties. We are focused on the I-4 corridor. The area where statewide elections get decided.

We canvass with an Issues Questionnaire that allows voters to tell us what is on their minds. We use it as a conversational check to guide volunteers through their dialog at the door. It makes it easy on our volunteers as provides us with vital data that will be entered in VAN (the Democratic database) after the primary. On Saturday, 1,214 voters answered questions from the Issues Survey. I can’t tell you how much our volunteers like this technique and how much *they* learn from knocking on doors.

They aren’t the only ones. We have knocked on 279,084 doors in Florida this year, and found 4,612 houses that were empty when we knocked on them, 18,572 other voters who have moved and re-registered 1,657 voters who needed to update their voting address (as required by HAVA). Re-registering voters has given these volunteers real motivation to find and correct voter addresses at the doors who talk to them.

Which is why our very first priority in these Senate Swing State canvasses is making sure that everyone in the houses that opened their doors is registered to vote at their current address.

We ask voters whether they have a primary issue concern. What we are looking for is to determine whether they are “single issue” voters. We use open-ended questions because we are really looking for quick, immediate responses. People know what issues they will be voting on, and if they can’t think of any, that doesn’t defeat the purpose. The Economy was the number one concern we heard in Central Florida. Voters are really concerned about the economic uncertainty on the Tourist Economy. Lots and lots of comments about how Florida just has not returned to (pre-Covid) normal. And some of the steps Florida’s governor has taken in the last few months have increased concern among the voters with whom we have talked. Jobs was second. Concern about Fair Elections (!) was third.

54% of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in Florida on Saturday. 9% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing.

DeSantis’ approval numbers are still stuck in single digits in Central Florida, 3% on Saturday; disapproval of DeSantis was 45%. Senator Rubio’s approval numbers rose to 19% this week. Still underwater, though (31% disapproved of Rubio’s job performance).

Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First Round of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022senateswing

Hope Springs from Field PAC understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud). We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.

We registered 18 New Voters last Saturday and updated (or corrected) the addresses of another 94 voters. Almost all of these registrations were accomplished using the Florida state SOS website.

We also ask people who open their doors about whether they need public services delivered to their neighborhood. 148 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms last Saturday. In general, we send these to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along. For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the Constituent Service Request forms and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.

We specifically ask voters if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections. Last year, we walked with lit about the changes in voting laws in Florida, but we also asked voters about their fears and experience in prior elections. Voters who say they have experience voter intimidation or other problems with voting are asked to fill out Incident Reports. We found 1 voter who wanted to fill out Incident Reports in Florida on Saturday. These are voters who witnessed some form of voter intimidation or malfeasance at the polls. We collate these Incident Reports, to be shared with local, state and federal officials in charge of voting, as well as use them to plan out our Election Protection strategy in the fall. They could also be used in court cases.

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022senateswing

Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/4/2114459/-Summerland-This-Is-How-We-Roll-in-Florida-A-Swing-State-Canvass-Diary

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