General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'If we do this right...': The new Dem organizing strategy catching fire ahead of the midterms
PoliticoDemocrats think it helped them win the Senate in 2020 and are hoping the get-out-the-vote strategy will help limit the pain of a brutal 2022 election environment.
Conversations with friends, family members or neighbors are more likely to earn a voters support than chats with a stranger at their front door, which is the traditional way campaigns have run paid canvassing programs in the past. And an important test case for deploying the strategy at scale came out of the Georgia Senate runoffs in 2021 when now-Sen. Jon Ossoffs (D-Ga.) campaign, flush with nearly unlimited cash but only two months to spend it, used a paid and volunteer relational program to get people talking to acquaintances instead of strangers about the election.
In particular, the Ossoff team hired 2,800 Georgians, specifically targeting those with little or no voting history themselves to do this outreach to their own networks. The campaign was making a bet that many of the friends and family of their highly political volunteers were already engaged in the runoff election, but that this group could expand the electorate with relational outreach into their networks which were likely to include more irregular voters or non-voters like them. The campaign folded this data into their vast field program, tracking conversations and whether those contacted had voted. They could even notify organizers, based on their own network, which voters were tagged as only reachable by you.
Hellbound Hellhound
(76 posts)It may have two degrees of separation between the party and the intended targets, and I suppose that makes it "legal", but an organized political party spending money for people (Selected by "The Party" through unknown means of screening) to "influence" people strikes me as morally gray at best, somehow.
brooklynite
(94,571 posts)No difference.
Hellbound Hellhound
(76 posts)The degrees of separation make it legal (I think), sure, but that doesn't make it morally correct. If a political party handed me a fistful of cash, said "Convince your loved ones what we say is best for them", I'd tell them to hit bricks no matter what party it was. Same applies to a corporation/business.
I dunno, maybe it's me just being old fashioned or the historian in me is bristling at the concept of "Bought" votes and voters in general given our nation's history.
brooklynite
(94,571 posts)If you paid me to convince my wife to vote for someone I DIDN'T support (simply for the money) you'd have an argument. If I support a candidate but I don't have the income freedom to spend my time convincing friends and family to vote for the candidate, paying for my time is perfectly appropriate.
Hellbound Hellhound
(76 posts)Likewise, they're being paid to "Talk about politics"; Does that constitute -every- political dialogue, or only those supporting The Party(tm)? Does The Party pay for political talks NOT supporting their candidates?
We'll likely not agree on this, and that's okay. It just leaves a very sour, skeevy, corrupt taste in my mouth, personally.
bucolic_frolic
(43,162 posts)There are always rides to the polls, volunteers. Maybe someone more in tune with voting can tell about "walking around money". I read an article somewhere in the 90s I think, about wealthier candidates visiting jurisdictions late in a campaign and dispensing actual cash to campaign workers, who would use this to print extra posters, perhaps pay operatives to post them, phone bank, or dispense pens and pencils with the candidates' name on them. It's marketing buzz, advertsing. I still suspect that's how Trump took PA in 2016. He made so many trips to podunkville PA, I was scratching my head - "What is he doing out there?"
Hellbound Hellhound
(76 posts)Paying someone to do something -for a party-, like printing posters, ad campaigns, et cet. is a normal part of campaigning and sloganeering. There's a reason for the "This ad is paid for by X" disclaimer; transparency. Paying someone completely unaffiliated to "The Party" in any way to grab their relatives by the cuff, say "POLITICS, VOTE!" is dramatically different in every way.
One is a professional, businesslike way to gain votes. The other is bribing a random individual to influence their closest relations to believe as they do.
bucolic_frolic
(43,162 posts)Campaigns hire workers all the time. Organizations pay employees to lobby for their candidates. Nothing to see there.
Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)a Democratic candidate period if the other choice was an asshat Republican or a third party type who could never win anyway.
Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)lambchopp59
(2,809 posts)The supports under our side's "high road" have been sprayed with corrosive acids and are crumbling from underneath us. "When they go low we go high" lost us a congress in 2010, underestimating the destructive force of hateful rhetoric Fox Lies has been reinforcing for decades.
Hellhound, this isn't a campaign anymore. R's declared this a war on us over a decade ago, and only when R's placed such an inexcusably idiotic buffoon in office did they finally lose one.
They've turned the 1 to 10 scale of corruption to 15.
We've got to pump up the volume, our democracy is in peril.
littlemissmartypants
(22,656 posts)We certainly can't just throw up our hands and give up. There are many different ways to GOTV. We have room for plenty of ideas. What are yours?
❤
mcar
(42,331 posts)I don't see where the voters themselves are being paid to cast their votes a certain way.
Hellbound Hellhound
(76 posts)Granted, those "individuals" aren't being paid directly to vote for The Party, but I somehow doubt the Democrats are seeking out Republicans for this particular service. If there was a way that it could be a requirement that the individual states "I'm being paid to talk to you about politics" before every such dialogue, I'd be on board.
I dunno. Like I said, legal, but I don't know how anyone could call it ethical.
Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)'ethics' worry.
mcar
(42,331 posts)to try to get them to vote, and to vote for their party. I've done it myself and plan to do so again for the midterms.
I'm not being paid but I'm going to be working to GOTV.
bucolic_frolic
(43,162 posts)LuvLoogie
(7,003 posts)The way the MSM and right-wing echo machine works, that will be the only message. They'll add vote buyers to the child groomer and baby killer charge.
Reimburse expenses and meals maybe.
Or buy some creative talent's time to come up with viral ads.
Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)folks who know how to use twitter,Facebook, TikTok and other popular social media. That will help a great deal.
Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)our party.
Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)last election and some who maybe didn't that we want to get back...there is no mystery here...these are self-identified Democrats...it seems you have a problem with the Democratic party. It is a good idea to pay workers and perhaps many who could not afford to help (gas and food as well as time) will be able to. And that is a win-win for us. And as for the rest of your post, I have my favorites in primaries as we all do, but in the General, I like all of our candidates and will work for them period. There is no Democrat that I would find objectionable as the alternative is a Republican...which is always a very bad choice.
bucolic_frolic
(43,162 posts)What Republicans fear most here is Democrats have found a way to bring more voters to the polls - voters that have not been reached by Republican methods of Church, business networks, advertising. So it could level the playing field.
Gaslighting this idea won't curdle it. I suspect this was a technique in Conor Lamb's first House victory because groups from all over the country headed to PA to make it happen.
Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)ibegurpard
(16,685 posts)That affect no one's opinions.
Demsrule86
(68,576 posts)live love laugh
(13,109 posts)bucolic_frolic
(43,162 posts)and it delivered for them in 2016. Now they're in a huff because they have no new place to find growth of voters. They have maxed out networking with business, church, and alt-right groups, they've maxed out hatred, they've maxed out FOX viewers, they've maxed out cheating except for voter suppression which is no longer a stealth strategy. I mean find their untapped resource and post it.
Democrats are shifting from traditional party apparatus to support by progressive groups and this type of voter outreach. Have we ever really targeted family groups before? In an activist way? No. We send fundraising emails and phone bank. So this is something new and it has legs.
GoodRaisin
(8,923 posts)non-voters to suddenly become highly political volunteers. Most of the non-voters I have ever talked to know virtually nothing about government or politics. There has to be some kind of training or coaching involved in preparing a force of non-voters to go out and execute this strategy.