So it was on a sunny Sunday afternoon that I completed my first canvassing assignment for the
Kilroy campaign. It was a most interesting experience. Read on below the fold...
I was teamed up with a more experienced volunteer at my request (this being my first time doing this), given a script, and assigned a neighborhood. It was a real challenging one: poor, white, and almost all students. The ultimate apathetics. Our assignment: to get as many Democrats and D-leaning independents signed up for vote by mail as possible.
It wasn't a very good neighborhood to see a groundswell of Democratic anger. Out of the people answering their doors (about half), approximately 1/3rd were Democrats, 1/3rd Republicans, and 1/3rd "not interested in voting" or "undecided" (read: heavily hung over after last night's Buckeye victory). Of the Democrats, several were already registered, which was encouraging, and several more signed up to vote with us!
Sadly, one of the most promising houses -- a child abuse safe-house with several Kerry stickers -- turned into the worst bust, as the person in it had a very big problem with Ms. Kilroy and let us know about it in no uncertain terms.
We ended up, after ringing somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 doorbells, knockers, and 4-flat doors, with 15 voter reg, most Democrat, with 2 "independents". So our group got 13-15 new votes for Ms. Kilroy. When we turned the forms in, the total had grown overall to about 65, and the canvassers were on track to break 100 when all results were in. Not bad for an afternoon's volunteering for 20 odd people.
I'm of mixed feelings about the canvassing. On the one hand, 100 new voters for an afternoon isn't all that much, though considering the difficulty of canvassing apathetic students (many of whom were probably raised Republican) I'm probably being too harsh. And with the polls in a statistical dead heat, every vote counts, and this sort of GOTV among normally non-voting students (using the new vote-by-mail tools given us) is likely exactly what Ms. Kilroy needs to do to win.
And damn, it feels good to be out there doing something, however small, for a Democratic candidate.