On August 24th, I was contacted by a member of the North Carolina ACLU about the Community Success Initiative v. Moore case court ruling that restored the right to vote for felons who are not currently incarcerated. She asked me if it was possible to contact the 43,058 NC residents that they knew were affected by this ruling. There was an initial concern that the state would appeal this ruling and a judge could put it on hold. So there was a sense of urgency, so urgent that not only did we send in organizers and volunteers from surrounding states but we continued knocking on doors and working to track down these affected North Carolinians.
Initially, we had a list of 6,810 numbers, some of them no longer in service. But we had committed volunteers who were willing to spend time researching. I taught them the principles of donor research we had used in campaigns and by the end of September, we had legitimate contact numbers for more than 10,000 of those affected. We also found a small number who had died or moved out of the state. We doubled the number of phone numbers attached to these prospects by Thanksgiving.
Phone numbers were used for two purposes: first, we robocalled them when we were planning on knocking on their doors. Doing this — letting people know that we would be contacting them greatly increases the chances that they would open the door. And, secondly, we use them for in-person phone calls after their doors have been knocked.
lit left on the doors
Almost every name on this list has been contacted at least three times since August 24th. There are people we have attempted to contact in multiple ways and some who have had their doors knocked on at least three times. It is difficult to know exactly how many attempts have been made simply because we aren’t just knocking on doors or calling numbers we think may be their’s. In the main cities and surrounding counties, we have enlisted the help of Black churches and local civil rights groups. Of course, many ACLU branches, NAACP groups and other local civil and voting rights groups have helped, as well. Some of them have even had volunteers join us in our Saturday canvassing this fall. So this evolved into an all-out approach to locate and register targeted voters.
What has happened, though, is that this comprehensive approach has resulted in other people getting registered, as well. In all, since our first August 28th canvass, we have reports of more than 32,000 new voter registrations throughout North Carolina as a result of these efforts. We think less than 10,000 of these new voter registrations (as differentiated from re-registrations) were on our original list. We are going to have to match new voter registrations to that list this winter.
This surge in new voter registrations due to this targeted approach to find people whose registrations could be restored due to the courts is the reason that we have separated these from our counts in prior diaries.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been canvassing in North Carolina (as well as Texas, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) since June. We already had a core group of volunteers, and some of them became super engaged by this specific mission.
Just like in our canvasses to find voters thrown off the voter rolls (eq, Wisconsin), we canvassed around clusters of the target group, making sure that we blanketed those neighborhoods in the Charlotte, Greensboro, the Research Triangle, Fayetteville and Asheville areas.
Hope Springs from Field PAC is knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to increase awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights. We are thinking about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ncvoterrestoration
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. But the reason we won the Iowa Caucus in 2008 was because we registered voters and then turned them out! The approach we adopted was focused on listening, on connecting voters and their story to the candidate and our cause. Repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud). We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.
So chasing down people whose right to vote had been restored was right up in our wheel house. We know that Republicans and their conservative allies will do everything they can to keep people from voting who don’t share their, well, skin color. We believe that registering *new* voters, making sure existing voters are registered at their current address (which is part of our super-compliance efforts), making sure that people are informed of the changes in elections law — especially the laws changed in this year’s sessions — as well as helping them to comply (this *was* the reason why we have equipped canvasses with mobile scanner/printers so that voters can make a copy of their IDs to include with their voter registrations — and will be used for absentee ballot requests in states like North Carolina that now require IDs for those) is central to our success in 2022. There is a bonus to this super-compliance strategy. People are upset when you tell them that Republicans are trying to make it harder for them to vote. We think it will make them more likely to vote, just because they are learning that Republicans don’t want them to vote in 2022.
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please donate:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ncvoterrestoration
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!