Last Saturday I canvassed for the local Democratic Party. Our target was young voters who had recently registered.
I had canvassed three years ago but that was done with paper printouts on a clipboard. Very clumsy when you’re walking door to door
Now we use technology to help us. I had to download an app from PDI to my phone and have a little training session on it, led by our own barkingcat. Once I logged in I got this screen:
I started here
Clicking on the training screen took me to my choice of three different views of my route. The street list,
list of streets
the voter list,
New young voters!
and my preferred view, the map:
Yay GIS!
Houses colored green are ones that haven’t been contacted yet. Clicking on a house or apartment icon in map view gives a popup of information:
1 people here.
Clicking on the popup takes you to another screen:
voter info
This is the screen I used when walking up to the door. If nobody answered, I clicked on the “not home” button, which changes the house color to yellow in map view. That means they’ll need to be contacted in another trip. If somebody comes to the door, then you click on the “begin survey” button which takes you to the script:
Even then, I fumble my words
Clicking next takes you to a set of questions to ask and you click next as you go through them. At the end, we thank them for their time and give the a flyer with voter information and one for county Measure I, which continues the fundraising tax for the Smart Train.
After you click all the way through for a contacted voter, it changes their icon in map view to red, which means we’re done with that address.
Another nice use of GIS in this app is if you’re walking with a partner and splitting the addresses, you can sync, which uploads what you’ve entered on your device with theirs and shows which addresses they’ve covered so you know what’s been done.
Sync or swim
This app made canvassing much easier. I’m sure I’ll be using this again when we get closer to the general election because GOTV baby!