Let's learn the lessons from Virginia to win the nomination

Report’s Authors Evan Coren, former City Council member from Columbia, MD who took off work to volunteer on Bernie Sander’s GOTV (Get Out the Vote) effort in Virginia for six days leading up to the primary. Evan has 20 years of experience working in Democratic politics and non-partisan municipal politics, including being a Campaign Manager multiple times (75% win record) and running the city-wide coordinated campaign in MD’s second largest city. – evcoren@yahoo.com Boone Nissen, lives in Virginia and was energized to get involved in politics for the first time by Bernie Sander’s Presidential race and has been an extremely active volunteer for the campaign starting at the first Barnstorming meeting in Northern Virginia. – bwnissen@gmail.com Zakiya Worthey, lives in Northern Virginia and is an avid social and political activist, who opened her home to the Bernie Sanders’ campaign GOTV effort in order to win South Arlington for Bernie Sanders in the Virginia primary. She has worked on campaigns for President Barack Obama, Governor Terry McAuliffe, as well as local and state elections in Arlington and Chesapeake, Virginia. – zuzzle@hotmail.com Boone and Evan met sharing rides to neighboring door knocking territories. Evan and Boone met Zakiya as they worked from her home as one of their campaign staging areas.

Start Early on Contacting Voters

In Virginia large numbers of voters on the walk lists were the 20 year old children of the homeowner. The targeted voter may or may not live at that address anymore and more often than not when you GOTV these doors you are reaching the parents rather than the targeted voter. This is fine for persuasion door knocking and even helpful. The adult children may have been working on persuading their parents and you can help seal the deal. However, for GOTV this approach is backfiring since you are turning out the parents at a much higher rate than their children.

If you get a late start you may only get one pass at each neighborhood. Out of concern for not even getting to everyplace once, neighborhoods are being knocked in priority order. This means the lowest priority neighborhoods are being contacted and reminded to vote closest to the election, including the weekend before and day of the election.

Solutions:

Volunteers need to get to the doors sooner and start with persuasion knocks in their lower priority high density areas and then move towards higher priority areas. At-the-door and snail mail GOTV should only be done to already identified Strong Bernie or Lean Bernie doors. GOTV to adult children of the homeowner should be done through social media, texts, and calls. It is vitally important for Bernie supporters to contact their friends and family early to encourage them to check out Bernie and to follow up to discuss the election and to remind them to vote, even if you are “sure” they will vote.

How to better identify and reach our voters

After doing 16 walk lists in three counties in a short time frame it became very clear where Bernie areas were and where Hillary areas were. The campaign’s data and walk lists are skewed not just by 20-something children registered at their parent’s address, but also by the fact that Bernie voters are more mobile and may not stay at the same address from election year to election year.

Solutions:

Early targeting of apartments, dorms, condos, and townhouse communities for voter registration are needed. The voter data for apartment complexes are very bad and starting early hitting every door in a complex for a canvas and voter registration drive can help bring Bernie voters into the political process.

Our voters don’t know the rules

We encountered many people who were Strong Bernie who had failed to register to vote by the deadline or whose kids hadn’t requested an absentee ballot in time. In addition, while doing Metro station visibility near areas where a lot of young people live we were approached by Strong Bernie supporters from Texas and Massachusetts that were on business trips to the DC area. These Strong Bernie supporters hadn’t known the date of their election and hadn’t gotten an absentee ballot.

One of the strongest and smartest things the campaign had done early was create the voteforbernie.org website where you can look up the voter registration deadline and whether you need to register as a Democrat to vote in the primary. However, clearly the word isn’t getting around enough.

Solutions:

We need to vigorously promote the voteforbernie.org website on social media and web search ads. We should prioritize and actively work to make voters aware of absentee ballot request information for every state. We should create funny viral social media content and video to help spread the word about the rules in each state. We should encourage our friends and family to remind their friends and family of voter registration and absentee ballot information. We should send out emails and social media on early voting times and a link to look up locations. We need more visibility events early where we think our voters gather to get word out. This is best at mass transit stops near where young people live, work, and hang out. Our highest volume engagement with Bernie voters in Virginia was doing visibility and fliering at Metro stations as people headed home from work and headed to restaurants and bars on Saturday night. Similar efforts can be done at similar gathering areas and on college campuses.

The challenge of strategic voting

One of the most common issues we encountered at the doors were Democratic voters thinking of voting in the Republican primary to stop Trump. This was in part because the Washington Post was encouraging its readership to do that, even though because of the Republican delegate selection rules Trump has an insurmountable lead for the Republican nomination.

Solutions:

We need to get word out about the Republican delegate selection process and how Trump most likely has the Republican nomination locked up. We need to forcefully make the case that Bernie is the strongest candidate to beat Trump. Trump will claim he is beholden to no one and only Bernie can counter that.

Fight for every vote

We need to compete everywhere and with every population. Bernie has a lifelong track record of fighting for justice and has spoken the most forcefully about ending institutional racism. He has clear policy proposals to start to fix our broken “justice” system, including banning the practice of for-profit prisons and having the Justice Department investigate any law enforcement officer that violates the law. The strongest Bernie supporters and volunteers we encountered were African American.

Solutions:

Part of asking for someone’s vote is being there when it isn’t election time, so go support justice campaigns including showing up and marching as a Black Lives Matter activist. Make fighting for justice as much a part of your life as Bernie has made his. Help make sure everyone has seen the powerful Erica Garner ad and encourage everyone to read Shaun King and Michelle Alexander and spread the word when Ben Jealous is on TV or radio.

Targeted persuasion needed

The Clintons are using the politics of blur very successfully right now. They are adopting Bernie’s language and trying to blur the distinctions. Not everyone is seeing Bernie’s speeches or is as aware of the records of the two candidates.

Solutions:

We must counter the politics of blur with clear, detailed examples contrasting Bernie’s and Hillary’s record. Engage lean Hillary voters on the issues they care about and they will probably discover that Bernie is better on the issues they care about than Hillary. However as any campaign will tell you, don’t get into a long argument with a voter. Carry around copies of the chart on Bernie’s website where he explains how he is going to pay for everything and direct voters to the bottom link on the issues portion of Bernie’s website which is where Bernie explains in detail how he pays for everything.

Volunteer empowerment

Many volunteers bring skill sets that would deeply help the campaign. One of our fellow volunteers was Ethiopian-American and on his own initiative as an in-kind donation to the campaign created fliers in Amharic (the major Ethiopian language) and English and fliered all the cars at Ethiopian-American churches telling parishioners why they should vote for Bernie.

Solutions:

Volunteer and if you have special skill sets volunteer to use those. If you are building walk lists in heavy immigrant areas (which we are about to get a lot of in AZ, FL, IL, MD, NY and CA) have walk lists for multi-lingual volunteers ready. It is vitally important for campaign offices, particularly regional and field offices, to communicate with each other and with volunteers. Volunteers that cannot walk or stand for long periods of time can serve as communications nodes in each level of campaign office and provide rides to the polls or to volunteers without cars. Volunteers should consider buying their own yard signs for their house and to yard sign the polling places outside the “no campaigning allowed” zone.

Early organizing is needed

Early organizing is needed to take the steps to help voters meet registration and absentee ballot deadlines. In addition, to better ID voters we need to start organizing sooner.

Solutions: