It was Painful and yet Gratifying (GOTV story)
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I just finished calling my phone list for GOTV efforts from GOP.com. I specifically chose calling voters in swing states. Since I'm in San Francisco Bay Area California, urging people to vote R is mostly a waste of time (you do get to accidentally spit on people if you talk long enough)... they gave me Montana as my swing state.
I have a few comments about the process.
1) You are supposed to follow the script. Well life is unscripted and so was my effort. There is nothing worse than talking to a Telemarketing tool. I kept most of what they wanted in my effort, but I'd like to think that my approach was a bit more friendly than the script.
I deviated from the script in the following ways.
1a) "Hi, is ? home." Well they give you the first and last name. Everyone knows that if someone calls you by your given name first and last ie. Gregory Thompson... they sure as hell don't know you are trying to sell you something. So to hell with that. I went with "Hi, is (first* name (*shortened if sensible ie Greg for Gregory). first* name last name) home." It seemed to put people a little more at ease.
1b) I told them who I was right off the bat so they didn't feel I was selling anything. "Hi! My name is David and I'm a Republican volunteer trying to get out the vote on Tuesday."
1c) All my calls were to Montana. The website didn't tell me who they were going to vote for. It can't be that hard to give me that info.. but neither was it hard for me to find out. So I did. Burns, Rehburg and Johnson and kept the Montana Republican website up in case I had to carry a conversation about these guys. Bingo. I felt I was prepared and I dropped there names into my schtick instead of the very lame 'Republican Team' the script was urging. That's lame Ken!
2) I wasn't overly thrilled with the website response choices. It wanted me to click on the results of the calls I made. All good and all, but for my preference there needs to be more choices and maybe even a place to type in some info. I felt I had more information to provide, but didn't have a place to put it. I feel in two years someone is going to call the same broken numbers again. Over 50% of my calls were unproductive. That's not very efficient. But what the hell do I know... my last name isn't Melman or Rove.
I'll say I've never done anything like this so I'd like to share my experience. It seems to me if this is typical... we could be totally screwed in 06'. Either that or the GOP GOTV machine needs some fine tuning. IMHO
Here were my final results. 30 calls total.
10 Phone is disconnected
8 Messages left (a few were with people. most on machines)
3 No contact made
2 Wrong Numbers (one woman hadn't been there for 2 years)
2 Wrong Party (one was an ex-moderate, another was a democrat but the husband was a staunch republican)
2 Business phone (no idea if the right person)
1 Voted in another state already
1 Voted already
1 Had moved to Texas (I was calling Montana... they moved. we laughed)
So in the end, I didn't exactly get to talk to 30 people who loved Ronald Reagan... but I feel good I helped out. It took me about an hour and I have a cheap long distance company. Give it a try.
She seemed the most upbeat.
As for the list... I felt some of the numbers I had were to cull the bad numbers out for the GOP. Which in the end... if that helps out thats great. I was just thinking if that WAS my purpose... I could have given them better info in the end.
1 number was changed. Another person changed states. 2 people were not on the bandwagon. A few numbers were to businesses and I wasn't sure we were getting to the end voter. A lot of disconnected phones. My choice was 'wrong number' well theres the wrong number and there is a disconnected number. A big difference for the future.
"Took the nickname Troll long before BlogTrolls existed..."
from the county GOP office. The quality of those phone lists are very high, IMO. But they are all local to that area of course.
Some of the people they are trying to reach aren't ones that are on the 'county GOP' list. They are the ones that have fallen thru the cracks. Reluctant Republicans. Blue Dog Democrats. Finger to the wind Independents. I'll call this the 'field'.
The GOP already has the info and resources to cover the 99% club. They are having newbies like me contact the outer fringe. Doing the math.. this makes sense.
1) If contacting 30 people (on my dime) gets even one vote out of 30 to show up and vote R... thats 0.033% more than they had before. If the entire 'field' (as discussed above) is canvassed/poked/stoked then that is a +3% increase in turnout. How many elections are one by that margin... plenty. And these swing states are that type of election. (I know the math is actually off once you consider the other side but for this purpose its fine)
2) This frees up resources for 'county gop' guys to concentrate on the core and waste no time on the fringe. Theoretically... there should be a lot more of 'me' than there are of 'them'. If time and effort is to be 'wasted'* its far better for 'me' to be incurring that than 'them'.
*Note in the end I don't think I wasted my time or money.
"Took the nickname Troll long before BlogTrolls existed..."
Take it from someone who knows VoterVault that the way in which the info is processed pretty much precludes little "comments". If you were doing it at your local office it would probably be the same thing, since it is all hooked into the same system. The data which is gotten from the calls is pretty much not reviewed, IMO.
Daddy loves froggy. Froggy love daddy?
- Attorney General Heady, 1873
With stikingly similar results. I left a lot of messages, and I kept them brief. In a friendly, cheerful and upbeat voice I simply said "Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the National Republican Committee reminding you to vote on Tuesday. I hope you will be supporting the Republican Team. Thank you and have a wonderful day." I did not ask for the person named, because I discovered shortly in most were wrong. Of the people that answered, only one was a Democrat, I apologized and I wished him a wonderful day, too. Several were Republicans and one friendly lady with a heavy middle eastern accent was not going to be able to vote as she was in the middle of a move. I wished her well. The rest were voicemails.
I've done cold calling of businesses--and I worked for the telephone company. Lots of unhelpful numbers.
Doesn't surprise me at all. Plus they probably reserve the most marginal stuff for us on-line volunteers. We're probably the least reliable. If these were really good lists, they wouldn't want to give them to Kos et al.
Thanks alot for your work. May have gotten a vote or two out of it.
Meanwhile, a massive project consumes my time this whole weekend. Can't even take a 1/2 day on Tuesday.
"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors." -Edmund Burke