The resident faculty left a note in the corridor outside the mail room that read “2, or 3 OT, or 5 PK.” We think that was a clue. (More)
First our thanks to last week’s writers. On Monday, the BPI Squirrel ranted on Marriage and the Race Card in Furthermore!, addisnana mused On Biting (and not about bugs) in Midday Matinee, and Winning Progressive asked us to Help the EPA Save 13,000 Lives per Year in Our Earth. On Tuesday, Winning Progressive celebrated Barack Bests Boehner in Budget Battle’s Beginning Bout in Morning Feature, and JanF was Pragmatically Progressive in HEMMED In and offered a Quick Take on Getting Real About Jobs in Evening Focus. On Wednesday, we had a Nutshell on McConnell’s Blink and the Frustrighti’s Fury in Morning Feature, the Squirrel discussed Rupert Murdoch’s Hairball in Furthermore!, addisnana warmed up to Comfort Food in Midday Matinee, and JanF brought a Quick Take on Balancing Acts in Evening Focus. On Thursday, we began our series on Enthusiasm with The News Cycle in Morning Feature, JanF was Speaking of Primacy in HEMMED In, and Deborah Phelan reminded us that Famine Threatens 11 Million in the Horn of Africa in Our Earth. On Friday, we continued our series on Enthusiasm with The System in Morning Feature, addisnana shared a stark protest idea with Die Quickly! in Furthermore!, Winning Progressive reviewed The Last Mountain in Our Earth, and JanF brought our news Week in Review in Evening Focus. On Saturday, we concluded our series on Enthusiasm with ‘Little Things’ in Morning Feature, JanF shared Saturday Videos in HEMMED In, Deborah Phelan called us to action with East Africa Famine Part II in Our Earth, and JanF voted neigh on Herd In-stinks in Evening Focus. On Sunday, Ms. Crissie opened the mail bag with Reinventing the Wheel? in Morning Feature, Winning Progressive offered Weekend Reading in Furthermore!, and JanF compiled our weekly Eco News Roundup in Our Earth.
Tonight Lake Toba returns to Evening Focus to continue his series on Water Security. He will share the first installment of a three-part interview with Craig Withers of The Carter Center. Craig Withers has been working in Africa to eradicate Guinea Worm Disease, and described that process in depth for Lake Toba. The rest of the interview will be published over the next two Mondays – July 25th and August 1st – in Evening Focus. Don’t miss this exclusive interview series!
Please join our Authors! We have Morning Feature openings this Tuesday and Wednesday (July 19th and 20th), and Evening Focus openings this Tuesday through Thursday (July 20th-22nd). We also have openings or our campus soapbox Furthermore!, our afternoon people-watching series Midday Matinee, and our evening environmental series Our Earth. Share your insights with the BPI community!
If you are already a BPI Author, you will find a complete list of category openings in the Authors Notepad in your Dorm Room. To reserve a slot, type in your user name, topic, and date, and click “Save Notes.” I will remove your note when I add you to our Schedule.
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Also: Please share your stories of offline activism in Things We Did This Week.
That leaves the resident faculty and the note they left outside the mail room, as they made their way from the wine cellar library where they spend the weekend drinking thinking on our motto of Magis vinum, magis verum (“More wine, more truth”) to the hot tub faculty lounge for their weekly game where the underwear goes flying planning conference. The staff immediately realized the note referred to the Women’s World Cup Final. The staff also knew the note had to be a clue to the resident faculty’s plans for the week. But what did it mean?
The Women’s World Cup final was a heartbreaking defeat for Team USA. The match was tied 1-1 at the end of regulation, and 2-2 at the end of overtime. Team Japan won the penalty kick shootout, 3-1. All other things being equal, the resident faculty reasoned, Team USA would have won had they scored 2 goals in regulation, or reached 3 goals in overtime, or made all 5 of their penalty kicks. (Japan did not need to attempt their fifth penalty kick.)
Of course that’s a speculative estimate. But to win, you need a target and a plan. Not just a vague sense of “more than the opponent,” but a specific estimate of how many “more than the opponent” is likely to be, and a plan for how to reach that target number.
In soccer the goals go on the scoreboard as they happen, so you know whether you’re winning or losing and can adjust your target as you go. But in an election you don’t know the score – in actual votes – until it’s too late.
So this week the resident faculty will share insights from this weekend’s Campaign Academy offered by Democracy For America. How do you estimate how many votes a candidate will need to win an election? Where will you find those votes, and how do you get them?
What we learn won’t help Team USA in women’s soccer, but it can help the other Team USA. The one we’re all on. Because if we want to win, politics can’t be a spectator sport.
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Happy Monday!
I am looking forward to this. When I was working with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Organizing for America last fall, we had a volunteer orientation that went into a lot of the nuts and bolts related to who we were reaching out to and why. The mathematics of the GOTV equation were very illuminating. I will have to dig up my notes so that I can share what I learned.
We need to remind each other daily about this:
Maybe even a spot under the BPI Squirrel on the front page …
This is so important, Jan:
We’ll talk about volunteer phone banks and canvassing later this week. Our trainer at the Campaign Academy has run political campaigns across the country and even a phone bank campaign in Argentina. She said the most common problem with volunteer voter outreach campaigns is inadequate training. I’m pleased to hear that OFA and the Wisconsin Democratic Party did not make that mistake when you volunteered.
Volunteers need to know the strategy behind their efforts, have clear and specific targets, understand how to use the script and make it their own, and know what obstacles to expect.
For example: In any call list, no matter how well maintained, about 1-in-6 numbers will have been disconnected. People moved, changed phone numbers, etc. It may be as high as 1-in-5. That means you will almost always make several calls in a row and hear bee-dee-DEEE…The number you are calling is no longer in service….. Life is lumpy that way.
Understanding and expecting that is often the difference between a volunteer finishing or not finishing a shift … or returning or not returning for another shift.
Good morning! ::hugggggs::
So many times I was sitting next to people who did not understand what we were trying to do. They were argumentative and confrontational where more listening and cyber-headnodding might have been a better strategy. You can rarely scream someone into voting your way. 😉
For us, the volunteer training was optional and did not happen until we had already done two or three phone bank shifts. I am hoping that DPW-OFA can do a better job this time.
You should put your Fred Whispering strategies into a pamphlet and sell it to OFA to hand out to volunteers.
If you have a list that is that dirty, 1/6 disconnected, it would probably be wise to run a robo-call message or survey to screen the list and avoid volunteer frustration.
Someone asked our trainer that question, Jim. She said she scrubs her lists twice a year, and still averages about 1-in-6 disconnected numbers in each phone bank. People move, change phone numbers, etc., more often than we realize. She also found that volunteers don’t get frustrated by disconnected numbers if they’re trained to expect them, especially if the phone bank uses an automated system. When a volunteer hears bee dee DEE, he or she clicks the Disconnected response button, the software brings up (or may even dial) the next number, and the volunteer moves on.
Good afternoon! ::hugggggs::
Very timely, Crissie. We’re (the leadership) meeting with our local campaigns this Thursday to ask these questions.
One of our trainers said she can tell a candidate’s campaign is in trouble when she hears these answers to the questions “How many votes will you need?” and “How will you get them?”:
Well-run campaigns can give answers like these:
I made these numbers up on the fly so the math is not exact. The point is, that candidate knows what numbers to reach and how to get them. That’s how we win.
Good morning! ::hugggggs::
That is exactly what our training did. We knew how many votes we needed in Dane County to overcome the expected turnouts and votes from the other counties in the state. We outperformed our numbers but the expected totals from outstate did not materialize and we lost.
So even good planning has to make some assumptions and our assumptions in the tea-party midterms were wrong.
We will need to avoid that in 2012 because the stakes will be even higher.
I’m going to my local OFA organizational meeting on Wednesday.
Thank you for your activism, Terri. OFA and DFA teach and use many of the same strategies. I hope you’ll join our discussions later this week and share your experiences.
Good morning! ::hugggggs::
Looking forward to learning about this, Crissie, and I hope you’ll include much more. The nuts and bolts of campaigning are invisible to most of us. How a goal is set is important, because unless you know where you have to get, you’re flying blind.
“More” is not enough. We need targets.
Too many candidates and issue campaigns do too much of this, winterbanyan:
Even where the candidate or issue campaign has done the planning, too often volunteers don’t understand the plan, or how their efforts fit into it. “We need more votes” is not a campaign objective. “I’ll take my message to the people” is not a campaign plan. And “Call numbers on this list for two hours” is not volunteer training.
Good morning! ::hugggggs::
One campaign does not build a party. We need a plan. We need to practice that plan. We need to execute the plan.
What better place to practice then the smaller election. If we practice at every election we get better. We can be at our best for the big ones.
This was amply proved by 2010, Jim:
Many states folded OFA into the state party, and thought it would yield the same volunteer base and outreach success in 2010 as in 2008. Oops. There is no reliable substitute for a solid local party group with the skills and practice to plan and execute voter outreach campaigns.
Good afternoon! ::hugggggs::