Georgia Green Party - Campaign 2000: Help Wanted

Campaign 2000:
Help Wanted

We Need Your Help To Win in 2000

Winning elections is all about counting votes. Talking to the voters in your community. Identifying their preferences. Mobilizing your supporters. Delivering the vote. A campaign is bigger than any one of us, but it can't be waged successfully without every one of us.

Read through the game plan listed below. If you are ready to take on delivering the vote from your precinct or your county, please contact me and let me know. We have very few days left until the polls close.

There are over 2000 precincts and 159 counties in Georgia. So far we have active county organizations starting up in 15 counties. We have about 40 or 60 precinct captains who have volunteered so far. We need your help.

Thank you for making a difference.

Hugh Esco
Clerk, The Georgia Green Party
hesco@greens.org

Delivering Your County for Nader-LaDuke

We build a political party organization to build political power and to win. We build it precinct by precinct, county by county, district by district. This is an outline of a work plan you can follow to succeed on November 7th. This work plan is applicable whether you are working on the Nader-LaDuke campaign, for the election of Jeff Gates, our U.S. Senate candidate or on a campaign for one of our state house candidates. The key is to build the campaign in small steps.

The basic unit of an election is a precinct. A precinct is an area where everyone who lives in the area votes at the same polling location, also called a precinct. It is bound on a map by other precincts and usually has boundaries that follow property lines, streets, creeks or county lines. Sometimes precincts will be split by a district, but usually districts are drawn to avoid such splits which make administering an election more difficult for the county election supervisors.

I. Resources and Background Research

A. The Map

The first step in developing a campaign plan for your county is to make a trip to your county court house. Go to the office of the Election Superintendent. In smaller counties that will be your probate judge. Purchase a copy of the precinct map, usually for about $5.00 or so.

B. The List

Next, write me hesco@greens.org and ask for a copy of the registered voter database for your county. Taliaferro County has 1,371 voters. Fulton has 357,894 voters. The other counties fall somewhere in between. As a political body registered with the state, we are entitled to one free copy of the registered voter database each year, plus the monthly "transactionals" or updates. Volunteers with our Information Technology Team have custody of that list and will forward a copy of relevant portions of the list at my request. So write me if you're ready to do the work outlined here.

C. Phone Number Appends

The list is pretty comprehensive with addresses, precincts, district, gender, race and voting history data. But it does not have phone numbers with it. We're looking at getting volunteers with our IT Council to do phone number append work for us in house. So far, though, we aren't set up for this. There are two ways to add phone numbers for the phone banking:
1. Use volunteers to look up the numbers in the phone book. This will match 40 - 50% of the names with numbers but is very time consuming.
2. Hire a professional service to do this. I have one vendor who has offered to do this for 4 cents per match with a 70% match rate. That's about $70 per large precinct or $10,021.03 for Fulton County.

As a condition of using the state party's list, we ask that you share back with us all matched phone numbers you acquire by either volunteers or a professional marketing service.

II. Organization

A. County Level Organization

Building and conducting a campaign is a lot of work. Many hands make light work. Its good to build a team of folks to handle all of the tasks. At a minimum, I would recommend the following:

1. Chair

The chair (or co-chairs if you can) can serve as a public spokesperson for the Committee, as a point of contact for key volunteers, as convener of the local committee meetings and facilitator of the work and communication for the committee.

2. Treasurer

The treasurer serves as signatory on the local account, approving expenditures and ensuring compliance with FEC and State Ethics Commission financial reporting requirements.

3. Press Secretary

The Press Secretary builds relationships with the local media, maintains a list of voice and fax numbers, email addresses and other relevant contact information for every print and electronic media outlet in the county. They develop and distribute regular press releases to keep the local media informed of the local committee's activities.

4. Fund Raising

The Supreme Court nearly got it right. Money is not speech, but it is certainly necessary to amplification of our campaign's message to the voters in your community. This should be a large and active committee. Its success will drive the capacity of the local group to conduct a successful campaign.

B. Precinct Leaders

Work to identify a leader for every precinct in your county. (In fact, please also identify leadership in the counties that border your own. Introduce them to us and visa versa). It is the precinct leaders who will carry the brunt of the campaign. They will organize the phone banks to do the voter ID work. Organize the literature drops. Identify hosts for the yard signs and drive the precinct regularly . And conduct the Get-Out-The-Vote work to deliver their community's Green vote on Election Day.

C. Visibility

The Visibility Committee should be large and active as well. These are the folks who distribute and replace the yard signs. They organize volunteer visibility teams to work public gatherings in the county, to wave at drivers in rush hour with the campaign signs, to be a visible presence at each polling place on election day. These are the folks who make our campaign known to your community.

III. Campaign Strategy

An electoral campaign is not rocket science. It's just a lot of work. Here is a basic outline of how to conduct a successful campaign.

A. The Care and Feeding of Volunteers

Campaigns run on volunteer energy. A campaign is about identifying volunteers, then mobilizing them to do work for the campaign. But mostly it is about taking care of these people. Making sure they have a good experience and are willing to come back next week for more. And to come back next campaign, as well. The Party gets built over the years, one election cycle at a time.

B. Voter Identification

Voter ID is the process of contacting every registered voter in your precinct and county and identifying their preference in your race. Do they intend to vote for Ralph Nader or Jeff Gates? Will they vote for one of their opponents? Are they undecided? Are they leaning one way or another? Are they persuadable? Getting these questions answered is the key to all the steps to follow. There are three types of voters from the campaign's perspective: 1) supporters to mobilize, 2) the undecided to persuade and 3) supporters of the opponents who you hope will forget to go to the polls on election day.

C. Support Mobilization

Once we identify our supporters, the next task is to mobilize them as campaign contributors and volunteers. Invite them to house parties in their community or your county's regular meetings. Ask them to plant a sign in their yard. Ask them to help with a literature drop. Ask them to phone bank. Ask them to get involved in the campaign and to contribute whatever skills and funds they have to offer in support of victory on election day.

D. Voter Persuasion

The undecided are to be persuaded. Get them literature. Do a follow-up phone call. Have their friends call them. Hear their concerns. Address those concerns. Bring them on-board.

E. Get Out The Vote

This is what the campaign is all about - bringing the identified Green Party supporters to the polls on election day. Start two weekends out. Call everyone on the identified supporters list and remind them of the upcoming election. Ask them to identify among their friends other campaign supporters and to pledge to bring their votes to the polls on election day as well. Plan a GOTV rally for your volunteers. Phone bank those supporters again on the last weekend. Use your poll workers to make sure your supporters have voted. Call them again in the afternoon if they haven't been to the polls yet to remind them to vote.

F. Election Day Activities

This will be a long day. Your poll visibility teams need to arrive at the polls by 6:45 a.m. Same with the poll watchers who will monitor poll site activities for irregularities that would adversely affect our campaigns. Polls open at 7:00 a.m. Get a van working to rotate out your election day visibility teams, deliver them meals and fluids, move folks from a low-turnout poll to a busy intersection or a high turnout polling place. Organize rides to the polls. When people call your local campaign headquarters, have cars ready to dispatch to pick up voters and deliver them to the polls. Make sure you have a victory party planned for your volunteers. Polls close at 7:00 p.m. The ballot boxes will be heading back to the county tabulation center by 8:30 p.m. By 9:30 p.m., early precinct returns will start rolling in. Make sure you have someone with a cell phone at the tabulation center to call in the results to your victory party. Don't count on the media to give you timely information.

The Ten Key Values:
Ecological Wisdom • Grassroots Democracy • Social Justice • Peace and Non-Violence
Decentralization • Community-Based Economics • Feminism • Respect for Diversity
Personal & Global Responsibility • Future Focus on Sustainability

Georgia Green Party
P.O. Box 5332; Atlanta, GA 31107
404-584-6242 < 4/1/01 * 706-896-7464 after (vm & fax)
ggp@greens.org•http://www.greens.org/georgia/