So, I wanted to volunteer for a political campaign. A few months ago, the campaign website went up, and I duly filled out a form to volunteer. They had checkboxes where you could state what you wanted to do, so I selected “Research” and “Data Entry.”
I don’t hear anything from the campaign. Then, last week, I get a call asking me if I want to phone bank or walk the neighborhood. I explained to the nice lady that I’m not really good at talking to strangers and that I would be better suited to data entry or research. And that I can volunteer 4 hours per week, but because of my work schedule, I need a fixed slot for volunteering. She says she’ll get back to me.
Tonight, I find a message on my voice mail asking me to come in for phone banking and neighborhood walking. I’m really perplexed. I understand campaigns can be hectic, but why are they refusing to utilize me for things which I am suited for? Can anyone shed any light on this?
I was going to start a pit thread, but then I realized that there might be something about the traditional way to run a campaign that I don’t understand.
I am not sure what you mean by research. Honestly, I am not sure how much need they have for data entry right now. I was doing data entry 10 years ago or even longer. But so much is done with data feeds from election boards and other sources. I don’t know when the primary will be held in you state or which campaign. But if phone banking is what they need that’s what they wil ask you to do.
I do understand your frustration. Some campaigns are notoriously bad at coordinating volunteers. Sometimes I have run into similar problems. Sometimes the candidates win in spite of the boobs running them.
But with that said, phone banking and lit drops are what they need. It’s a good way to get out and establish who your supporters are so you can make sure they show up on election day. You kind of have to go with it. If you had volunteered a couple of months ago they might have harassed the shit out of you for petition drives. Doesn’t sound like your cup of tea but that’s where they would have needed you.
It was on their sign-up form. I assume it meant stuff like researching position issues or legal analysis or something similar (which, I’m a lawyer, so I’m qualified to do those things). But, I have no idea what they meant.
I didn’t’ realize this. I had assumed there is some sort of ready-made infrastructure out there to help with campaigns, but I wasn’t aware it was this advanced. But then, I don’t understand why they put it on their sign-up form if they don’t need it.
The primary is a month away.
I did want to try and get involved with politics more, but it appears there isn’t a good place for me. Money’s tight, but I guess I’ll try and send something to them in the next few weeks, if that’s all I can do. Thanks for the response.
This is more of an IMHO answer - I’ve never tried to organize volunteers for a campaign, but I have volunteered for a couple. They clearly and obviously needed people to phone bank and doorbell; it was a high priority. They also needed people in the back room doing data entry (even with data feeds & such, they needed people to record who had already been phoned and doorbelled) but it was a lower priority need. Based on my experience, I’d call and find out whether they were staffed during the hours that you want to volunteer. If they do go and say “I want to do _______.”
BTW, phone banking isn’t always all that bad. The last time I did it, the list I had was of people who they were 99% sure would vote for us. All we were supposed to do was remind them about the election. No argument or discussion or convincing, just “Remember to vote!”
There probably is a need for data entry. I volunteered for the Obama campaign in Toledo, OH for one day* a couple years ago and I hurt my foot (doing absolutely nothing, by the way) a couple days prior and wasn’t up to canvassing the neighborhood, which was what they wanted us to do.
So instead I did data entry. It was very localized - I entered the canvas sheets of the people who were in the neighborhood so that future canvassers could target potential voters accurately. (ie, focus on undecided voters.) It was hectic and there was a lot of work to be done.
But this was a well-funded presidential campaign in a swing state just a few weeks before the election. I don’t know how across-the-board that experience was.
*I live about 40 miles away from Toledo, in Michigan, so volunteering more wasn’t really feasible. I was happy I was able to go even once.
Well with the primary a month away, I suspect that phone banking and canvassing are pretty much the priority right now. Even if the candidates are uncontested, they still want to show a high turnout. Its not that they don’t need the data entry and research at all, but they don’t need a lot of it right now. Once the summer starts, opportunities for that may pick up.
I would say to try and give phone banking a shot. I don’t know how flexible the campaign is. Again some are better than others. A lot of the folks I have phoned for have been really flexible. I would stop in after work and tell them that I only have an hour or so. They would give me a short list of calls to make and I would be done. Some days I could go a few hours. If you do it once and decide that it really isn’t for you, you don’t have to go again.
This is kind of a shot in the dark, but given your sort of skills it may be up your alley. Rather than call the campaign, you may want to call the party and see if they are interested in your legal services. I suggest this not knowing whether or not your firm would permit this nor do I know your legal background. But the parties tend to have armies of attorneys working on and around election day. They may need motions filed to keep polling places open or they may need people who can dispense legal advice for various issues that can crop up.
One thing I did in the past is election day poll watching. I was assigned to sit at the polls and record the names of voters who appeared. The party handed me a card with a half dozen names of volunteer lawyers to keep with me. If an election judge challenged my poll watchers certificate or if a voter challenged my right to be in the polls, I was told to get on the horn to one of the attorneys so they could lay down some legal mumbo jumbo and put it the issue to bed.
Just so you know, I fucking hate the door to door stuff as well and will clean toilets at party headquarters before I do any of that. For one thing, I don’t have the physical stamina I used to. And for another, I don’t have the patience to deal with people at the door. They either like you and want to tell you their life story and why they are on board, or they hate your guts and want to spend the next half hour telling you why. Ick!
The reason they asked you to phone bank and walk is that they always ask people to phone bank and walk. That is the greatest need and that is what they are always going to ask you to do.
I volunteered for the Obama campaign in Kansas City, MO for a couple of months. I never bothered to fill out any paperwork, I just showed up and asked the person closest to the computers what I could do. Within an hour, I was training other people to do data entry and I ensured that I would only be doing data entry by being several times more productive than anyone else. I’m show up, grab a bunch of filled-in forms, plug my headphones into my iPod and power through the pile.
Later, I volunteered for a different campaign and the whole thing was walking. It was a cluster fuck as they had far too few cars so we were literally walking twenty miles a day (unsurprisingly, the candidate lost).
No, no, no! They still need data entry people. (Somebody has to enter the data that they get by phoning & canvassing, or that effort is largely wasted.) The data feeds you get from election boards voter registrations, and from buying lists is just raw data – it’s the info you add to that from contacting those people that makes your list valuable.
And given how quickly it can be entered, and then turned around and printed out on new lists (today’s phoning list is all the people who we couldn’t reach yesterday, eliminating those we did talk to), it’s important right up to election day. That’s the day where it all matters, so you spend the last few days almost exclusively on GOTV (get out the vote) calls to your supporters. And you know who your supporters are because all the previous months of phoning & canvassing, which has been data entered so now you can produce lists of your supporters.
In 2008, for the last few weeks before the election, we actually had a night shift of data entry people. They would come into the office late, as the canvassers finished up because it was too dark to knock on doors any more. Then these data entry volunteers would work until 2-3am, entering all the data collected, so that the next morning updated lists could be printed for the phoners & canvassers.
That they haven’t called you about data entry is likely incompetence/miscommunication within the campaign. That’s not very unusual, given that most of the people are unpaid amateurs.