Uhhhh...

[mmcirvin]

Mary Kay Kare has links to get-out-the-vote/election-activism efforts, with this mention that gives me pause:

[...]ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) plans to contact each of its newly registered voters SIX TIMES before November 2.

Is this really a good idea?

Comments

[cheryln.livejournal.com]

In 2000, I volunteered hot 'n' heavy for an issue interest group. Phone banked, door-to-door, lit drops, the whole nine yards. I was off work on Election Day, and spent a lot of it calling people who had clearly been called by several other people already.

In the end, it made me disgusted. I felt one step, if that, above a telemarketer. So I still send the group money, but I don't do campaign volunteering anymore.

I think it's hard for someone like me, who registered as a seventeen-year-old senior in high school, who thought people under eighteen should have been able to take a test or something to get an exemption to vote if they were underage but could prove they were informed, who goes to pull the lever even in the dullest of uncontested primaries, to understand needing to be coaxed to vote.

I live in Pennsylvania, which has been bombarded by advertising and activism this time around, even more so than then. I'm supremely irritated by getting one GOTV call after another, but that's because I'm going to vote anyway and I don't want them bugging me about it.

But for people who don't think voting matters, it may help to repeatedly remind them that it does. Or at least theirs might. All I know is that phone banking is a major tactic of campaigns, so it must work on some people, at least as many as it annoys. The same way telemarketing does.