Brainstorming Door to Door -- Grassroots Decentralized

lonestarguy

Member
Joined
May 11, 2007
Messages
163
Okay, here's the scenario I hope you will brainstorm, critique about, improve upon, and more.

Scenario:

Meticulous coverage, door to door in a major urban area of a medium size city, with over 110,000 single family units in an important caucus and or primary state. The specific state has motivated volunteers and good leadership. But they too have lives to lead in addition to operating a multi-tasked campaign and should not reasonably be expected to handle epic tasks by themselves.

The Door to Door Plan: Because the city is of sufficient size, it is divided into a quadrant. The four sectors of the quadrant become areas of responsibility for the adjoining states and their meetup volunteer groups. There are at least two states assigned per quadrant.

Some quadrant assigned states may have differing views of how best to tackle their assigned area of responsiblity. That is fine, it could lead to creativity and more efficient and complete coverage.

Here is one plan, for example, by state X.

X keeps track of names and cell telephone numbers of volunteers transiting into the urban quadrant. A group of three volunteers, two women and one man, initially arrives on the ground in the assigned quadrant. After arising from their hotel or campsite, they meet for an early lunch. At lunch, they study the city map, and decide to begin from the intersection of the axis of x and y and work outward. Deciding that they will find more people home later in the day, they decide to walk neighborhoods from 2pm until 8pm. They decide to all meet for a late dinner and compare notes, noting the specific street and address numbers covered, (i.e., 001-1407 Webster Ave, all even and odd addresses, etc).

They in-turn email or fax the numbered street addresses, and any heretofore uncovered RPaul supporters, to a meetup monitor who then posts the street #s completed to a website, and forwards the RP supporter data to the appropriate local volunteer in the city.

This initial group continues to meet everyday for lunch to plan the day.
Another volunteer arrives and joins the three initial volunteers,and the four plan their day of neighborhood walking. They repeat the sequence; they meet for dinner, compile their days result and fax or email results to the monitor. The website is updated.

Three more volunteers arrive a day later, they meet up with the four volunteers who are still there. The seven volunteers meet for lunch, study the map, plan the day, and repeat as noted above. The first four volunteers depart for their home state. The three recent voluteers continue to follow a similiar sequence and so the situation goes.

In this scenario, it is asked that each quadrant, at the end of it's daily activities, compile the street#s completed and the RP supporters discovered and faxed or emailed to the monitor. The website page now begins to show growing completion of a door to door campaign.

As one quadrant gets completed or nearly filled, volunteers from those states could be flowed into quadrants that could use the assistence.....etc etc etc.

Now your comments please, questions, improvements, critiques..........let it begin!
 
I think this is an excellent real world plan.

It would have to start in a meetup group, I would think. I would suggest everyone suggest this in their meetup, and guage level of interest.

Perhaps each quadrant should have a set meeting place, like Starbucks or a sit down burger joint, and it would just be a daily noon meetup. Anyone that can show up, any day, just goes there at noon. Via web there is access to a database of addresses already covered/ not yet covered.

Possible obstacles:
There is a limited number of people willing to go door to door.
The website coordination could be labor intensive, or limited expertise available.

I'll ponder this a bit more.
 
It's a start. Everything should be coordinated with local RP groups. Do you mean door to door face contacts like Jehovah witness people or just leaving info on the doors. I don't think people like to be disturbed and you can cover a lot more ground just leaving materials. What do you all think on face to face door to door canvasing. Anybody have much experience on this. Is just mailing easier and faster.
 
Lonestarguy- our meet-up in Houston has been working a lot on this topic- it may be easiest to talk voice so I'm PM you my cell. Actually I'll be in Austin this weekend at that. :)
 
The suggestion of this thread is the bread and butter of real world political campaigning. Instead of the quadrant approach this type of work should be done using voter lists and by precinct. Yes, I have political experience having run for state office in Illinois. In 2004 i personally knocked on 14,689 door(but who's counting.) Here's how voting juristictions breakdown in a typical state.

State divided into Counties
Counties are divided into Townships
Townships are divided into precincts.

A precinct is basically a neighborhood. In my suburban area a precinct will contain approx 100-500 voting households. Door knocking should be done rather than a simple "lit drop". It's a simple "Hi, I'm a volunterr for Ron Paul who is running for president in the Republican primaries and we wanted you to have some information on him.(then insert your favorite bullet point--just one though i.e. 'he wants to get rid of the income tax'.)

Always remember that 97% of the electorate has nowhere near the passion about politics' that you do. The average voter comes home from work and waches American Idol and vote for the guy who looks best in a suit. Sure this is condescending and sad but it is also the truth.

Tried and true politics' 101 says it takes SIX direct touches with a voter to get them to vote for your candidate. By touches i mean direct voter contact. Examples:
Door knock = one touch
Direct mail piece = one touch for each different piece
Robo call = one touch
Yard sign view = one touch
Live phone bank call = one touch
Etc.

Critical to this kind of precinct work is the meticulous keeping of data. As I've said before Political campaigns are more about prospecting than they are about persuasion. Meaning it is a waste of manhours and resources to try and convince Neo's; instead it is more effective to identify people who alread have a pre existing agreement with one or more of Dr. Ron's positions.

Good record keeping is critical. A database should be updated to indicate which voters are for or against. It is just asimportant to know who is opposed to yoru candidate so no further resources are expended trying to 'win over' that person.

The database with identified supporters is crucial to the Get Out the Vote(GOTV) efforts before primary day. Live phone bank calls are made to identified supporters.

The old baseball slogan: Get 'em on, Get 'em over, Get 'em in.

Get on Amazon and search for books "how to win local campaigns". There are dozens of books that have the basics. We are not re-inventing the wheel here and the internet is wonderful and glorious but only supplemental to shoe leather and will.
 
These are excellent posts. I'm a meetup organizer in Orlando. Yes we have a lot of members. What I'm trying to figure out is a plan. These posts are exactly what I need. Bruehound, what's the best book on grassroots organizing?

My contribution to this discussion: When I come to a meetup, I make it a point to try and inspire members to action. I make an impassioned plea for people to work harder, explaining that this country is in serious trouble. Some members think I'm being bombastic and devisive. I'm torn. I don't want to blow people out of the water. But I think that there is danger in that meetups will ultimately fail if we don't inspire people.

Perhaps I can find balance in the specifics offered here and 'barn-burner' speaking ;-)
 
Perhaps I can find balance in the specifics offered here and 'barn-burner' speaking ;-)

Maybe try to come up with 'fun' activities and try to garner support for specific projects. Weekly social meetups helps, ones that have less pressure, and people get to know people better. Then, "hey you wanna go up to the fair and pass out some flyers?" becomes a friendship thing, instead of a work thing.

When people get out there and DO something together, they often find it's rewarding and fun. If they don't, they might never become big activists regardless of how you try to motivate them.

I would talk more about how easy it is to do little things -- flyers in bathroom stalls, on bulletin boards -- sign making parties, etc.
 
It is way too exciting to see all the invaluable experience from just the few who have posted on this list. You should all be paid organizers at national, like yesterday!!!

The point about coordinating with the local RP meetup organizer is exceptionally well taken, and of course a priority, as they're blessing definitely needs to be gained.

In the real world, the point that is attempted to be driven in this thread, is the hope of 'landing' volunteer boots on the ground (as the candidate has already landed) to initiate door to door contact with the public to not only make an 'impression' and distribute literature and raise name recognition and identify new homegrown supporters, but to send signals to the media/pundit world, that heretofore has discounted said candidate, that this candidate indeed means serious business and intends to compete in every realm and has volunteers at his disposal willing to do just that.

The boots on the ground as we all are aware is not a singular event. It's part of the psychological/political milieu of a campaign, in this case, a very special campaign which has something to prove: real viability. It should be viewed as part of a larger, 'stir' or 'blossoming', if you will, of parallel activities such as live phone banking; candidate in-state and local face-to-face appearances with voters; tv and radio appearances; release of latest fund-raising data; the tension of an upcoming 5 August Sunday morning 90-minute in-state televised debate; the slow crash and burn of other candidates campaigns, and other factors that haven't been considered.

While in a better world it would be optimum to go to ground with precinct lists, I'm wondering if for this period between now and 11 August, we simply consider the city and its surrounds one large precinct. I mean, since it would be the campaigns first foray into the area, we'd be gathering data on RP supporters anyway, that we could mesh with the lists for the Fall campaign.

What say all?
 
Is there any difference we should consider in that we're organizing for a primary election right now, rather than the general election? Perhaps having voter registration material on hand when door-knocking?

Also, at the meet-up I attended, the organizer wanted to work off voter registration lists. But wouldn't we miss alot of people who aren't registered? Would it be better to just knock on every door in an area?
 
Is there any difference we should consider in that we're organizing for a primary election right now, rather than the general election? Perhaps having voter registration material on hand when door-knocking?

Also, at the meet-up I attended, the organizer wanted to work off voter registration lists. But wouldn't we miss alot of people who aren't registered? Would it be better to just knock on every door in an area?

Voter reg cards are an excellent idea, for the same reason it may be better to just knock on every door in an area, IMO. So many of those we need to bring in are either first time voters, registered dems, or independents. All of these need to register republican to vote for ron paul.
 
This is a great idea!!

Remember, the national campaign HQ has access to A LOT more info than we can get personally, and has staff in almost every state. We should coordinate this at all levels. Meetup groups can be the smallest local organization, all the way up to the national campaign.

The national campaign has access to the information to all registered Republican voters in each state. This could be made available to the state and city campaign headquarters, and then organized with the meetups.

Meetups would then organize a coordinating meeting, assigning single members or teams to focus on particluar neighborhoods. This could be scheduled on weekends with memebers alternating mornings and afternoons. Small 1-3 hour committments from each memeber...

MAN!! If we start this now, do you realize how many voters we could reach???!?!?
And to think, they'd actually be talking to a human being about issues and Ron Paul, not listening to the MSM turn their minds into dribble....
 
Possible obstacles:
The website coordination could be labor intensive, or limited expertise available.

I don't think that's a problem. We've got some talented folks and the human resource pool is growing daily.

We've got an advokit server running at

https://ronpaulaustin.com/spooner

right now (sorry login is by invite only... see the advokit demo at

http://advokit.civicactions.net/demo/

). We have 260,000 voters loaded up. The data is somewhat stale (fresh voter data costs around $2000). But it's been proven to be viable, at least for its intended use: to support phone banking targeting Iowa.

Question: could our volunteers walk the streets "blind", that is just knocking on doors, and *gathering* data as they go? Because this would be the reality, more or less, given that as it stands around 25% - 50% of the records in the database contain old phone #s / addresses.

Only alternative is a quick, hard fund drive to get the Iowa data.

cy
 
Voter reg cards are an excellent idea, for the same reason it may be better to just knock on every door in an area, IMO. So many of those we need to bring in are either first time voters, registered dems, or independents. All of these need to register republican to vote for ron paul.

This dovetails nicely with my previous post. Can we reach a pragmatic concensus on simply walking precincts, collecting data as we go, and inputting it into the database at day's end?

re Quadrants vs Precincts, I think the precinct method works nicely as it's a natural fit to the electoral structure and the corresponding data structure.

Thoughts?

cy
 
In regards to door knocking on unregistered voters and 'hard D" democrats(i.e. voters who voted in the last 3 Dem primaries)-- traditional political campaigns(primary) do not do this because the cost per vote of those households is very high. You literally have to hold their hands and drag them to the polls if they are non voters. Always remember that people do not care as much as you do. It is a more efficient use of manpower and resources to go after the low hanging fruit.

Having said all that.....this campaign is completely different than anything I have ever experienced.

Whatever criteria you decide to use for targeting your door knocks, DO organize your work by precinct and keep that database of identified supporters. I cannot stress enough how important that is for the GOTV effort.
 
I agree with your reasoning. Dems and Republican should be targeted. Remember, the beauty of Ron's message is that it strikes a cord with anyone "thinking" person who understand liberty and its roots and costs. There are some of these left on both side of the two-party aisle.

Whatever criteria you decide to use for targeting your door knocks, DO organize your work by precinct and keep that database of identified supporters. I cannot stress enough how important that is for the GOTV effort.

I think the information should be coordinated back up to the meetups who should organize the drive, and the meetups could report the data to the local or state campaign offices. This will give the national campaign an idea of the pulse of the campaign overall, and they didn't even need to SPEND very much to do it.

Another beauty of Ron's campaign - it parallels his message of limited government and limited spending. If "We the People" actually take action, we don't need his campaign constantly spending and giving orders.

We truly have the power to make change!!
 
Possible Door2Door Data Compilation Form

Confirmed Iowan RP Supporter & Street Address Completion Data

Please List street and numbers completed (Ex: 1201 thru 1709 Archer St, both even and odd completed. Ex: 101 thru 1309 Jones Blvd., odd numbers completed. Ex: 12002-15026 East Blvd, even numbers completed)
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ______________________________
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ______________________________
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ______________________________

Name:_____________________________________________ ___
Mail Address:__________________________________________
Telephone #:___________________________________________
Email Address:____________________________
Need Yard Sign: circle Yes No
Willing to Vote For RP at Ames Straw Poll 8/11: circle Yes No Maybe

Name:_____________________________________________ ___
Mail Address:__________________________________________
Telephone #:___________________________________________
Email Address:____________________________
Need Yard Sign: circle Yes No
Willing to Vote For RP at Ames Straw Poll 8/11: circle Yes No Maybe

Name:_____________________________________________ ___
Mail Address:__________________________________________
Telephone #:___________________________________________
Email Address:____________________________
Need Yard Sign: circle Yes No
Willing to Vote For RP at Ames Straw Poll 8/11: circle Yes No Maybe

Name:_____________________________________________ ___
Mail Address:__________________________________________
Telephone #:___________________________________________
Email Address:____________________________
Need Yard Sign: circle Yes No
Willing to Vote For RP at Ames Straw Poll 8/11: circle Yes No Maybe


Fax this Form to 123-456-7890 Your Name/tel. #:____________
Or email to __________ Your Meetup Group/#:_______________
 
Thoughts from Iowa

Lonestarguy,

I think your plan is well thought out. I would echo all the insightful things said by Bruehound, including the part about keeping things short and very simple – people don’t want to be bothered, especially by strangers who may be from out-of-state. The conventional wisdom in Iowa is that the Deaniacs may have hurt their cause last time by having all the young people from out-of-state door-knocking. I can’t vouch for that, but it sounds like they were aggressive and too engaging. Don’t lie if someone asks where you’re from but don’t advertise it, either. I’m not suggesting that door-knocking is a bad idea but it must be subtle to have the desired effect. Just one kind sentence and hand them a slim jim or something asking them to come to Ames on Aug 11. Don’t stick around unless they really want to talk. If they seem interested, ask if they’d like a RP sign for their yard and note this and follow-up later. Remember at all times that you are on their property and you weren’t invited.

I also like the idea of sorting by precinct – just seems easier to compartmentalize than the quadrants – but I understand the time constraints. Maybe we can be more sophisticated after the Aug. 11 Ames Straw Poll in preparation for the caucus in January. You might also try to target your door-knocks…you might be able to get the voter registration lists by precinct from RP HQ and target republicans and independents, perhaps. I know a lot of democrats will like Ron Paul but I really believe that very few of them will actually switch to the GOP and show up on caucus night. You may have better luck with independents but most of these are people who are turned off by politics – not the kind of people who will go to an Ames Straw Poll or show up on caucus night.

I agree with the focus on central Iowa. These people are just more likely to make the trip to Ames than someone from the outlying areas of the state.

Other notes:
  1. I agree with coordinating with the nearest meetup group.
  2. Carrying a few voter registration cards would be easy.
  3. Don’t waste your time on really trashy-looking neighborhoods or homes.
  4. Watch out for dogs.
Thanks for all your hard work, lonestarguy!
 
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