You’re Fired!

Come November 7^th you will either have a job as a politician or you and your staff will be, well, fired. Back to your regular lives. Are you prepared for that? Will you get to make the impact you wanted to if you don’t get elected?

“But, wait! I want to win my, fill in the blank here, school board seat, city council, mayor…”

It’s full court press time and here are the things you can do to make a positive impact on your campaign.

1. Canvass, Canvass, Canvass

KNOCK ON DOORS! This is no time to be shy or feel like you are imposing, this is GO time. We’ve covered canvassing in previous posts but this is one of the most effective tactics to use. When someone shakes your hand or that of you supporting volunteers they will remember you. Particularly if your opponent isn’t canvassing.

ASK FOR THEIR VOTE! Many times when canvassers go door to door they only talk about what the candidate will do and forget to ask for the vote. “I appreciate your time Mr. Smith, can we count on your vote for our candidate?”

2. Make those phone calls

Are you using a system that will allow you to easily make phone calls and track the outcome? Was it a “no answer”, “left voicemail”, “disconnected”, “no longer at that number” or “talked to them – yes vote”, “talked to them – no vote” or “talked to them – undecided”.

With the exception of “talked to them – yes vote”, you should call back everyone else, particularly this week, one week before the general election.

By now, the system you are using should easily be able to deliver a report of the people and numbers you need to call so you don’t have to spend time sorting paper or spreadsheets.

3. Run Social Media Ads

This should have been a tactic early on but if you didn’t jump on this bandwagon months ago now is the time to get in there.

When you run your ads you get to pick the budget, $50? $500? $5,000? All depends on how large your voter base is, demographics of your voter pool will determine which channels you use and which audience in those channels you will target.

When you run your ad be sure to include a call to action! Many people make the mistake of running ads but forget to ask for what they want – for the voter to make a commitment to vote for them.

The call to action can be clicking a button or asking for their email address so you can follow up with them on the issues.

4. Emailing Works

Think email marketing is dead? Think again. It’s highly effective. If you have permission to email your constituents you should be emailing them. As with calling, canvassing and ads, there needs to be a clear, concise message coupled with a call to action.

5. Poll Watch

We talked about poll watching in last week’s blog and the importance of that. Having a representative at each polling place can make the difference between winning the election and losing it.

Getting the data of who has voted and who hasn’t is quite valuable on election day. This information allows you to know which doors to knock on, who to call and ask if they need a ride to the polling place or simply sending them a text.

By knowing who to not reach out to is just as important as knowing who to reach out to. If someone has already voted you clearly do not need to spend your time talking with them on election day, when time is of the essence.

Remember, most offices have a minimum number of votes they need to even be voted into office. Which means, even if you run unopposed if you don’t get the minimum number of votes, you still may not win your election.

It’s time to put on your walking shoes, headsets and take a seat at your computer to get the last votes you can get. Using Handraiser software can help you manage all of these tactics from canvassing to email to calling and most important those last few votes using Poll Watch.

Poll Watching Can Win Your Election

You have spent a lot of time campaigning by knocking on doors, making phone calls and sending out mailers. It’s a lot of hard work and with election day only 15 days away you can’t let up now. Matter of fact, you are probably increasing your outreach efforts.

What are you going to do on election day? Are you going to continue to call voters, knock on doors or even text them? Yes, you should. The bigger question isn’t who you will call, you should have that list by now from your electoral office. It is knowing which voters to call because they haven’t voted yet. Spending time reaching out to voters who have already voted isn’t going to help you win your election.

Reaching out to those voters who haven’t voted yet can help you win your election.

This is where poll watching can benefit your campaign. By definition, a poll watcher is a representative of a political party or of an organization running a candidate who is assigned to the polls on an election day to watch for violations of the laws that regulate voting, campaigning, etc. Their main purpose is to ensure voting laws are being complied with, that intimidation or voter fraud isn’t happening and to challenge voters on their identity if needed.

If you do have a poll watcher at the voting precinct then you’ll be able to get the information on who has voted that day. This information can then be relayed to the campaign or candidate office so they know who to reach out to. This is usually done by having poll runners collect the data on paper and taking them back to the campaign office.

Depending on the state will depend if you can have your phone with you or not as a poll watcher. If you can’t, you might be able to petition the electoral office. If you can or you get permission, you can use technology to help you mark off who has voted.

Let’s enter into the 21^st century and use the technology available to us. Why use poll runners and pen and paper when you can use an app? Even if your polling precinct doesn’t allow electronic devices you can still tally the information and then walk outside and send the information electronically.

Voter-marked as voted in Handraiser app.

Handraiser has an app that will help you track this data and it automatically reports it back to your voter database. Handraiser allows you to upload your voter file that typically has name, address, phone number and a place to mark if they have voted at the polls or not.

This is a very efficient way to work with your volunteers to let them know who to reach out to on election day. When time is of the essence on election day, your volunteers will now know who to call, what doors to knock on and even who to offer rides to the polls.

Every vote counts, you owe it to your campaign to give it every chance to win that you can.