Last weekend in Connect! Unite! Act! I talked about our effort to join Votefwd.org — one of the tools available to us that will help to encourage voters to show up at the polls. If you haven’t signed up, definitely do, and put a bit of your own sweat equity into helping to fix our country.
In a recent email, I had someone ask: what exactly do you do at Daily Kos? This is a good question to cover today! In a typical day, I spend my time talking to state organizations and campaigns about using Daily Kos as a tool to get out their message. Whether that means sending data to Daily Kos Elections, working with Daily Kos Activism, writing a diary, or following a user in their district who makes an impact.
I also spend time talking to state organizations and campaigns about what they think it will take to win their races come November 6th. And, I’d love to say I have all good news, but I want to tell you why it is incredibly important that down the stretch we fight to win on November 6th.
In the run up to 2016, a good friend relayed a message to me that he thought we were “good,” but added: “There is way too much over confidence,” saying that too many people were taking it for granted that we would walk away with a lot of great campaign wins in 2016. A few weeks later, his initial “I think we’re OK” was upset with the election of Donald J. Trump.
Today, I hear frequently from Democratic workers who say “the wave is coming, and it could be high enough, anything is possible”.
An ocean wave is the product of tidal forces, gravity, the moon, and many other factors. A wave of voters on the Democratic side only happens with a lot of work. It takes a lot of hands working every day to make it happen.
We sometimes say: always think that you are four points down, and fight like you need every single vote. On election day in 2015, I saw that first hand, as a city council race came down to 4 votes — and the winner, in his effort to turn out the vote, personally drove 6 voters on election day to the polls whose advanced ballot was not registered. The counting of their provisional ballots was the difference between him winning by four or losing by two.
Early voting is available in several states now, and if you have time and a voter committed to vote for your candidates, now may be the time to start working to get them to the polls. Voting early saves campaigns an incredible amount of work — it means fewer voters they need to contact down the stretch and more votes “banked” for them on election day.
Voter registration deadlines upcoming:
If you think you are registered, still, check with your Secretary of State and local election officials to make sure your registration is correct if your state does registration.
This November, at the end of the day on November 6th, watch the results knowing you did everything possible to help get voters to the polls.
What are you working on in your local area
to move our progressive agenda along?