I survived canvassing

[eirias]

And it was extremely uneventful.

My tally:
1 (one) woman in a pink bathrobe who said, "I have to get ready for work!" in a panic, and slammed the door.
1 (one) woman who said "Now is not a good time" and very clearly meant "Fuck off and don't come back."
1 (one) woman whose mom answered the door and said "She's really sick and I'm here taking care of her." Ooops.
1 (one) man who cared enough to have already voted and was sick to death of being bothered.
1 (one) man whose daughter had moved to Canada.
1 (one) man who was ineligible to vote (spoke fluent American English) and whose same-age female housemate didn't live there anymore. My first imagined backstory for this house: dude got busted for selling drugs, girlfriend left him. My second, more charitable backstory: Born overseas and immigrated young, live-in cousin found a place of her own in a neighboring town.

Aaand several people who smiled and said "thank you for doing this."
Aaand about 100 people who weren't home.

OTOH I don't think I actually talked anybody into voting. One person said she'd think about it depending on when she got off from work.

Well, win or lose, at least now I have sore feet. And radicalteacher treated me to ice cream.

Comments

[corydoras.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha. I like your imaginative "back stories" to the scenarios that you come across.

superwombatgirl and I had a similar ratio of weirdness to uneventfulness.

We did stumble into a homeless shelter for people with disabilities and mental illness at one point. The part that was a bit awkward was when we realized that most of the people there weren't eligible to vote. But it did make a lot more sense when we figured out why that house had about 20 people listed as living there.

We also had one guy scream at us from inside "what do you WANT!!".

But otherwise it was a lot of friendliness. My absolute favorite was when a priest (in fully priestly attire) asked us if we were from fair wisconsin, and when we say yes he says to us "great! thansk for doing this! i was afraid you were some of those "yes" people and am glad to know you aren't out here working for the other side." Yay for faith leaders who use their religion to promote kindness rather than fear/intolerance!

[littlepurple.livejournal.com]

so would you canvas again?

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Not sure.
It would take another issue that I cared this much about -- which means I'd never do it for a specific politician, or for any budgetary issue, or for most anything really. And I would be extremely unlikely to do it for anything other than GOTV.
It's not that it was a bad experience, but my not wanting to go out and do it was never really about it being a bad experience. It was about it being a bad thing for people to do. And I do think that most canvassing is, in fact, a bad thing for people to do -- but not this kind.

[drspiff.livejournal.com]

The thinking behind canvassing is that there is solid scientific evidence that a voter who is contacted is a voter who actually bothers to go to the polls and cast a vote. So you might not have changed minds but you still made a difference.

[cos]

It's rare that you actually directly talk anyone into voting. That usually only happens in obscure special elections on oddball dates, that aren't getting much press coverage, so people don't really have it on their mind that they need to go vote.

What actually happens is that repeated contact makes people more likely to vote. There's a lot of research to back this up, including trials with controls, from different decades, in different parts of the country, in different kinds of elections, etc. Each contact prods someone who thinks they might vote / probably will vote / intends to vote, further up the scale. Neither the canvasser nor the voter may be aware of the fact that that one last contact got that voter to vote, because it's a cumulative effect. It might be a voter who fully intends to vote, who might've just let it slip as a matter of convenience but didn't because someone else just asked them to and they said yes I'm voting and saying that you're going to do something that you already intends to do means you're not as likely to let it slip.

[superwombatgirl.livejournal.com]

While i don't think we talked anyone into voting, we were able to clarify the poorly-worded ammendment for one woman. i can hope that that made some sort of difference...