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Tales from the Doors: Things volunteers hear at the doors in Georgia & Florida [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-07-12

You won’t be surprised to learn that this occurred in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. An area that until recent elections had been red. And there are lingering effects. We see this in the Black Belt as well. Working in Swing States can be challenging. And interesting, as well. I recently had a conversation with a volunteer who is helping put together a website for Hope Springs and he asked about me flying around to canvass with our volunteers in different states each weekend (that i can). This is why i knock on doors, despite my age. Practice what you preach, they say.

368 volunteers came out to knock on doors in Georgia last week. We continue to knock on doors of voters in the Black Belt in Georgia and the suburbs of Atlanta, and we now have more volunteers in the Atlanta area than we have out in southern Georgia. They knocked on 15,215 doors and talked to 1,033 voters. 585 voters answered at least some of our questions on the survey this week.

Most were incredibly pleasant.

The Top Issue volunteers found in Georgia on Saturday was Jobs. A lingering fear of a recession, continued questions about kids getting job or even internships(!). Fear about losing their existing full-time jobs. Full-time is being specifically mentioned now.

The second most frequent concern in Georgia this weekend was Concerns over Extremism. A lot of this has to do with Trump and the talk about a Georgia indictment. We do hear voters wondering if Trump will unleash his “hoards” if that occurs. “I know Proud Boys,” one voter said.

The third most frequently Issue this week was over Student Loans. And this wasn’t by anyone who had just graduated college. Parents who were afraid their kids are going to have trouble now that they will have to start paying their loans back again. And some of these voters are a little sheepish in talking about it, because “you have to pay your debts.” Makes you wonder if students and their parents fully understand the ramifications when they are signing those papers.

Biden’s Approval numbers among the voters we talked to was at 51% last Saturday, with a Disapproval number of 8%. In comparison, Approval of Governor Kemp was 35% and Disapproval was 21% last Saturday. Kemp has the greatest variation in his approval numbers that i’ve seen since we started canvassing in the state. There is no senate race in Georgia this cycle (and a number of Georgia voters have told us “Thank God” there isn’t because they are exhausted!) and while we ask if voters approve of the job their senators are doing, we are not tracking that.

Volunteers registered 19 new voters and re-registered 56 voters. We differentiate between the two because brand new voters are often ignored by campaigns and we hope to compensate for that somewhat by having volunteers send them post cards before the election and they are also getting robocalls thanking them for registering. But we are finding lots of teens who just turned legal age whose parents (primarily mothers) are insisting they register.

88 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. 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 CSR and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.

4 voters completed an Incident Report. Two other voters expressed concerns about the 2024 elections but did not fill out incident reports because they didn’t say they witnessed voter suppression or intimidation (they just expressed concerns or worries about them).

We continue to find voters who say they need a photo voter id (which is surprising since that was required to vote in the 2022 elections) — even in the Atlanta suburbs — and are already working Voter ID Days with Registrars offices and our partner Black Churches in both southern Georgia and the metro Atlanta area. We consider it a core mission to help voters in need obtain the required document to vote in November 2024. So far we have found 199 voters who need help get obtaining one before the next election. This effort arises out of the group texts among Albany State organizers who had worked with me in the first Georgia Runoff (and who have now moved on from college to young, working adults who have not given up on helping those in need “where they came from”).

Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since March in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2024 Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are canvassing Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel

Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal for what we are doing.

196 volunteers canvassed came out to knock on doors in 7 Florida counties on Saturday. In several locations, volunteers showed up after it had sprinkled and returned before it rained. “It was almost like someone was watching over us!” They knocked on 14,445 doors and talked to 1,016 voters. 619 of those voters answered questions on at least part of the Issues Survey.

The Top 3 concerns of the voters we talked to last Saturday were, first, The Economy. Voters expressed worry about recession fears and whether state government was slowing down the economy. Both the Orlando Sentinel and a Jacksonville television station had stories about how meetings and conventions were being pulled out of Florida because of the governor’s extreme policies. Partisanship was second, continuing on from worries over the Economy and whether young people would “stay.” Voters, in Central Florida, again brought up Disney and related-area concerns, which came in as third on the list of their Top Issues. The fact that we were canvassing in the Jacksonville area and it still made the list continues to speak to how important this is to one area where we are knocking on doors.

Biden Approval among the Floridians we talked to was 51% last Saturday; 8% expressed some measure of Disapproval. 11% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Rick Scott was doing while 38% expressed Disapproval. We continue to be asked (by Democrats, apparently) if Scott was going to run for president, something that people have talked about since he was in the governor’s mansion.

Speaking of Florida governors, 10% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. DeSantis was doing a good job, 36% said they disapproved of the job he was doing.

Front of Florida Literature

42 Florida voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. We send completed CSRs 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.

Our very first question on the Issues Surveys is whether the person we are talking to is registered to vote at their current home address. We also ask if there is anyone living there who needs to be registered as well. In Florida, given the current laws, we offer up a tablet with the Secretary of State website up so that voters can register or update their information themselves. Part of this is making sure that voters are registered in compliance to the new, confusing and frustrating Election law that is particularly onerous for people who change residences more frequently than normal. But registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is also critical to our approach. Arizona has a much more friendly voter registration system, including the ability to opt in to permanent early voting. Of course, canvassing is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.

In Florida, though, the new law requires voters to provide, in addition to their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number OR their driver license OR state ID card number to make an address change. Which is par for the course this year, but here’s the part that is likely to stump people who move around. You have to remember which one you provided, because you have to provide the same one every single time you interact with your local Supervisor of Elections, or your request won’t be granted. Supervisors of Elections won’t have access to other databases, so they can only "verify” a request by the information the voter has provided. But this is something we have learned to track so that if the voter registration was not successful, we can go back.

Back of Walk Lit

20 voters updated their voter registration addresses in Florida on Saturday. We use the Secretary of State website to register voters in Florida, in order to meet Florida’s difficult restrictions there.

We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters. At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand. The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter. We also ask voters if they have an problems that local, state or federal governments need to address in their neighborhoods.

But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. We find that most voters who aren’t in a hurry or in the middle of something are willing to answer at least a couple of these questions, especially their top issue or concern and their views of President Biden. Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary. Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022). There is a lot of work to be done! Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them. That includes making sure that out-of-state workers at Disney know to, and how to, obtain a State ID card if they don’t want to give up their out-of-state DL but still want to vote in Florida. There’s a lot of work to be done, but fortunately, the three states that are making it most difficult are also states in which you can knock on doors at least 10 months out of the year. And, with your help, we will be there, getting our people to super-comply with these restrictive provisions.

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/fistfulofsteel

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

[i am at Netroots Nation this week. if you are interested in meeting up, send me a DM through Kosmail!]

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/12/2180508/-Tales-from-the-Doors-Things-volunteers-hear-at-the-doors-in-Georgia-amp-Florida

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