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Final Push for Voter Registration in North Carolina. A Swing State Canvass Report [1]
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Date: 2022-08-23
We’ve been playing catchup in North Carolina. In Georgia, the AME Churches (District 6 iirc) had made a real commitment to mobilizing voters in that region/district. The district encompassed all of Georgia, so their efforts to organize their churches and mobilize their members dovetailed into other efforts to turn out African-American voters. In North Carolina, the AME district is comprised of multiple states and interest in the state doesn’t have the same kind of institutional support. They are also far fewer in number than those in Georgia. Nonetheless, the institution of Election Committees and the comparison of their membership lists with the voter file has been complete. Efforts to get those who are not registered on the voter rolls continue.
Part of our effort has been to include the unregistered in our weekly canvassing efforts, not specifically targeting them per se, but cropping their addresses and walking with volunteers from their church. And, as I mentioned before, volunteers really like knowing there is someone in a house who “should” be registered. “Can I have a list with ‘prospective registrations’ on it?” volunteers actually ask organizers.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in 8 Senate Swing States for more than a year now and our data-mining practices are not only helped our efforts by energizing our volunteers. Who knew? The point is, of course, returning field efforts at voter contact to reinstall best practices, and specifically practices we perfected in the field during the Obama campaigns. Because the pandemic meant we lost years of best practices because we didn’t knock on doors in 2020.
406 volunteers came out to knock on doors on Saturday with Hope Springs from Field PAC. We are still knocking on doors in the silver “Toss Up” Congressional District (NC-13; an Open (R+3) where Democrat state Senator Wiley Nickel will compete against Bo Hines (R) in November (Hines being the “next Madison Cawthorn, so go throw Nickel a few dollars)) south of Raleigh, as well as in Robeson, Rowan and Chatham Counties. We continue to use our Issues Questionnaire as a conversational tool, offer Constituent Service Request forms (and incident reports for those who have witnessed election malfeasance) and left our lit at every door on our lists.
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. I can’t tell you how much our volunteers like this technique and how much *they* learn from knocking on doors.
We ask voters whether they have a primary issue concern (“a single issue that will determine how you vote”). What we are looking for is to whether people think their Top Concerns are their voting issue. And 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. Schools and specifically the School Safety (whether Gun Violence or Covid) was the Top Issue in North Carolina according to the voters we talked to on Saturday. The Economy and the prospect of a Recession was the second highest concern. Concern over Rising Health Care and Health Insurance Costs was third place among the voters we talked to this week. Like other states, we still hear about Reproductive Rights and Gun Violence in the “single issue” or message to Congress query.
Voter views of President Biden have rising (which is notable or strange given the media right now). 57% of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in North Carolina on Saturday. 8% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. Governor Cooper (who is term-limited and can’t run for re-election) had 55% job approval from the voters who answered their doors and responded to the questionnaire. Democratic Senate nominee Cheri Beasley had 77% approval.
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 39 New Voters at their doors last Saturday and updated (or corrected) the addresses of another 83 voters. More than a handful of the new voters we registered this week were the result of our partnership with Black churches and the willingness of their members to walk with us.
We ask people who open their doors about local concerns, and specifically whether they need services delivered to their neighborhood. 163 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms last Saturday. More than a handful of these were the result of our partnership with Black churches and the willingness of their members to walk with us. 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 also ask voters in the Issues Survey if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections. Voters who tell us they have experience voter intimidation or other problems with voting are asked to fill out Incident Reports. We found 9 voters who wanted to fill out an Incident Report in North Carolina on Saturday. More than a handful of these were the result of our partnership with Black churches and the willingness of their members to walk with us. 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.
But asking — and collecting — Incident Reports has a second purpose at this time. We are reminding voters that we care about Election Protection, that if they witness something, they can say something and it will matter. It also assures them that we are ready to do something if they see something.
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 donate:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022senateswing
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!
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