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field notes [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-10-20  

I was asked to say something about the Reuter’s article. Almost every group i know of that employs paid canvassers struggles with the issues discussed therein. I have to be brief because Hope Springs from Field PAC’s [website] F.E.C. reports are due on the 20th (today) and that’s always a challenge. Love the fact that more and more people are donating but not the fact that it takes so much of my time every month!

Reuter’s reports:

The political action committee funded by billionaire Elon Musk to help re-elect former U.S. President Donald Trump is struggling in some swing states to meet doorknocking goals and is investigating claims that some canvassers lied about the number of voters they have contacted, according to people involved in the group's efforts. The difficulties, in pivotal battleground states including Wisconsin and Nevada, come as the group, America PAC, races to enlist voters behind the Republican candidate in the final two weeks before the Nov. 5 election. Four people involved in the group's outreach told Reuters that managers warned canvassers they are missing targets and needed to raise the number of would-be voters they contact. Alysia McMillan, who canvassed for the PAC in Wisconsin, said field organizers recently told campaigners there they weren't reaching daily objectives and were on track to miss an ultimate goal of contacting 450,000 voters by Election Day. In one meeting with canvassers, recorded by McMillan and reviewed by Reuters, a manager warned of the shortfall. "We're not going to hit 450,000, not with what we've got now," the manager said in the Oct. 8 meeting. It isn't clear how many knocks the Wisconsin teams have reached so far.

It goes on:

One canvassing manager in Arizona said leaders there had issued similar warnings. Three other people familiar with the outreach told Reuters that Chris Young, a Musk aide and longtime Republican operative, had recently traveled to Nevada to audit whether doorknocking tallies there had been inflated by some of the workers hired by contractors. Another person briefed on the matter said America PAC was struggling to find sufficient people to conduct audits in other states. [...] America PAC's ongoing outreach is built around door-to-door efforts to convince "low propensity voters" – those who may support Trump, but could stay home instead of voting – to cast their ballots. The work has focused on battleground states, where any small difference in voter turnout could clinch victory for Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, in an election that polls continue to say is too close to call.

It makes sense. Trump, Musk etc believe you can buy an election. A recent F.E.C. ruling made that virtually inevitable on the GOP side:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is relying on a cluster of loosely coordinated outside groups to run turnout operations traditionally performed by the campaign itself, an approach that takes advantage of new leniencies in campaign finance rules but comes with the risk of untested outfits duplicating efforts or working at cross purposes. With fewer than 100 days before the election, local GOP officials in battleground states have raised alarms about the scant presence of Trump campaign field staff. For the large armies of paid and volunteer door-knockers and canvassers who typically drive turnout in presidential elections, the campaign is largely relying on outside groups such as America First Works, America PAC and Turning Point Action. The Trump campaign’s shrunken in-house operation resulted from its takeover of the Republican National Committee in March, when Trump secured the nomination. The RNC had been planning an extensive field program, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Those now-discarded plans included 88 staff members and 12 offices, and goals to knock on 3 million doors and make 2.4 million phone calls, in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, the RNC’s plan called for 62 staffers and seven offices, aiming for 558,000 voter contacts. Past experiments with outsourcing field operations, most notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s heavy reliance on a super PAC in the Republican presidential primary race, have wound up as expensive boondoggles. With the legal barriers now removed, the current effort will test how much the rules — as opposed to structural or personal dynamics — contributed to the challenges. It will also test how a novel approach stacks up against the Democratic ground effort, which is using more traditional methods. In what everyone expects to be a close election, the unglamorous mechanics of mobilizing a sliver of additional voters can make all the difference. In 2020, a change of about 43,000 votes across Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin would have been enough to tip the electoral college.

The Wall Street Journal chimes in:

Republicans in swing states are rushing to shore up their ground game in the final stretch of the campaign, fearing that former President Donald Trump’s outsourcing strategy has faltered and won’t drive enough voters to the polls in key battlegrounds. The Trump campaign has gambled that it can have outside groups including Turning Point Action pay people to knock on voters’ doors instead of doing much of this work in-house, as in prior campaigns. That group, the organizing arm of Turning Point USA, founded by the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, has GOP operatives particularly worried. Some Republicans in such places as Wisconsin and Arizona have said they aren’t seeing Turning Point Action make much progress, an allegation the group rejects, arguing its work transcends the traditional GOP model. A GOP operative in Michigan said the Trump campaign is knocking on one-tenth of the doors it did in 2016, though a Republican National Committee official said the campaign’s efforts have yielded five times as many Michiganders committed to voting for Trump this year as in 2016. [...] In addition to Turning Point, much of the GOP ground game this year is being undertaken by Elon Musk’s America PAC, which has fired vendors on two separate occasions in the final months before the election. America PAC at one point paid its door knockers $30 for each door, according to people familiar with the matter. That is an exorbitant amount for such work, which more typically is closer to single digits for each door, people close to the industry said. America PAC later adjusted course and is now paying $30 an hour, with opportunities for bonuses, according to its website. The alleged overall disorganization risks imperiling the GOP’s ability to connect with voters regarding Trump’s economic message. Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, meanwhile, is using its cash advantage to increase its voter outreach. Polls show a tight race, putting outsize importance on how the campaigns are allocating resources. Trump himself has asked Republican officials to stress election integrity over voter-turnout operations, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Harris campaign is not doing the same. And the incentives for those knocking on doors are the opposite for the two sides. Harris (and Coordinated) campaign volunteers want to return the most accurate information possible after they knock on doors. Response inflation is a feature for the other side’s paid canvassing operation, which provide financial rewards for those who hit higher targets.

On Saturday the 12th, we had 1,243 Hope Springs from Field volunteers come out to canvass in . 343 volunteers came out on Sunday, including some Virginia volunteers who drove down to North Carolina. Volunteers definitely make the best canvassers because they believe in our candidate and are eager to spread that message. We’ve also been canvassing throughout the week, with a total of 2,141 volunteer shifts in these purplish suburban areas where Hope Springs remains active. We knocked on 138,831 doors total for the week.

Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors on March 2nd to set up a favorable “battle space” or foundation for Democrats in 2024 in what grew to be 13 Battleground or Swing States. We target Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans. The voters we talk to in these Swing States tell us they come away more invested in governance and feel more favorably towards Democrats in general because of our approach.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization2024 Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do. Now we are focused on turning out every Harris (and, in states with referendums, abortion voter) that we’ve identified in this final phase of the election cycle. We do our own kind of auditing of volunteer responses. As regular readers know, i’ve long used a system of 10/10/10 calls where i speak to 10 organizers, 10 volunteers and 10 voters every Thursday. If we’ve identified irregular patterns, those are the 10 voters i will talk to, to make sure they had been contacted and identified correctly. Only after that would we be raising the issue with the volunteer. But, again, our incentive structure is different. No one’s getting paid, so there is no need to goose one’s numbers. In fact, the numbers returned on a Hope Springs canvass by individual volunteers is rarely known to anyone other than organizers. But this subject came up possibly because of the approaches that Hope Springs volunteers continue to get from MAGA canvassers about taking jobs with their groups. Most of the people to whom this has happened are shocked by the suggestion. Someone suggested they are probably getting bonuses for every new canvasser they recruit. Obviously, we don’t know. But Hope Springs volunteers continue to observe MAGA canvassers and tend to be very critical of their, well, let’s just call it skillset. No volunteer claims to have seen MAGA canvassers at a door. We know they are at least delivering lit, but we haven’t seen anyone talking to a voter. At least not in these key swing areas.

So we can’t really say that Musk’s group, or Turning Point Action, or any of the other MAGA groups who promised they were going to deliver victory to Trump are doing much outside of getting paid. We weren’t surprised by the Reuter’s article. And we don’t see how they could recover from such an incompetent effort. As one of our volunteers pointed out, the MAGA paid canvassers promise they can deliver victory, our canvassers deliver the data that is key to victory. And we do this by talking to voters, one door at a time.

AFAIK, Hope Springs from Field is the only Democratic or Progressive group on the ground week in and week out, year in and year out, as weather allows. In fact, that was one of the biggest reasons why Obama alums came together to create what we envisioned to be a pop-up PAC for the Georgia Senate runoffs. There are a number of MAGA or conservative orgs who have done (and are doing) the same thing for years (even decades) before Hope Springs began. But that makes us uniquely able to judge the MAGA ground game.

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