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TODAY IS THE DAY! Rockin' GOTV in Ohio. Get Out the Vote! [1]

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Date: 2023-08-08

I don’t know about you, but this is the day i’ve been waiting for since the start of July. Maybe earlier. A core mission of Hope Springs from Field PAC is special elections. Today is just the latest in an increasingly long string of special elections — an overwhelming number of which Democrats have won! We have not lost a special election since Roe/Webb got overturned: Pennsylvania, Virginia, and, now, today. I’m not superstitious! I am definitely feeling positive — as long as we complete the plan. Get our voters to the polls.

That’s what today is all about! Before Trump, before Covid, Election Day meant everything. Democrats, we would say, are social creatures, we loved the spectacle of going to the polls. The community, our love of the public act of voting.

It’s not like that anymore. It wasn’t just Covid, it was Trump. Trump made public displays of that liberalism more risky. But today is the day.

Today is our fifth (and, perhaps, last!) day of GOTV Week here in Ohio. The weather is looking good. Cooler today, less humid — perfect voting weather! This is an intermediate report about today’s efforts, so far. Numbers are not final so i do expect some change between what gets reported here and what goes into the regular diary on this weekend’s effort in Ohio.

Our GOTV universe is now 33,008 house-holds, but we know that some of these voters have voted early. This is a considerable drop (thank god!) from the 43,127 households we had on Sunday. This morning, our organizers — and thank god for our out of state organizers! — struck almost 7,000 stops from our driver lists for our runners today. In a couple of cases, we had to re-print drive lists but most of them already look ugly. Or beautiful, depending on how clean you want the lists to be (they will hopefully get uglier and uglier as the day goes on). 697,375 Ohioans have voted early. We know that we will win if we complete our GOTV plan. It does give us the best chance for victory. Run scared, like victory requires you to give everything you’ve got. I know i have. This morning, we had 511 volunteers chasing down voters who we have identified as Issue 1 opponents who have not voted yet. This is the first shift (the second comes in ~2 hours). We are really pushing this last opportunity to drive out the vote. Last night, volunteers who hung door hangers were also placing markers at driveways to make it easier for today’s drivers to identify the right home to hit today. We have 32 staging locations we are working out of, and organizers choose different forms of marker but i still prefer a (small) American flag. I was explaining this to another long-time organizer yesterday afternoon, and he really challenged me about the reasoning behind this. And i reminded him about how ugly the drive lists become, that mapped routes we start with are constantly changed, and that it is likely every single driver will approach homes from different routes throughout the day. Having a marker there reminds drivers that this is the place. This is the door you have been looking for. A 12 hour election day will schedule drivers to run voters down 3 times, but this 13 hour day means that we added another attempt or round to drive out the vote. So we will be knocking on doors 4 times today. Yes, it is that important. If we find voters at even a third of the voters from these 33,008 households, it will have been a great day!

27 of our out-of-state volunteers are stayed through today (they are not included in the 511 number). A handful will stay to help with Ballot Curing, until the election is called. Most of us are hoping that it is called tonight. For those who care, i’ve already had people tell me, “GO HOME.” Apparently, i look the part (tired).

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/8/2185944/-TODAY-IS-THE-DAY-Rockin-GOTV-in-Ohio-Get-Out-the-Vote

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