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I have been doing a lot of activism with Swing Left geared toward flipping Republican districts in my area to Democrats. Yesterday we had the primaries. Cut for stuff about California elections.
It was a pretty chaotic primary due to California's weird "jungle primary" system in which the top two candidates advance regardless of party, Democratic enthusiasm resulting in multiple Democratic candidates splitting the vote, and Democratic candidate egos resulting in low-polling candidates refusing to drop out. It's preliminarily looking like we avoided the disaster of having Democrats locked out of the ballot in November in races they might have otherwise won, but it won't be a sure thing for a few more days. Some races are extremely close (like, under 100 votes), there's absentee ballots still to be counted, and an apparent clerical error in LA left 119,000 voters off the rolls so they had to vote provisionally.
I have been canvassing in District CA-48, among other places, which is currently held by Dana Rohrbacher (commonly known as R-Moscow.) There were EIGHT Democratic candidates, three of whom dropped out but too late to be removed from the ballot (all three of them got 1% or more of the vote), and many more polling at impossible-to-win numbers but refusing to drop out.
The top two D candidates are Harley Rouda (a former Republican who donated to Republicans as late as 2016) and Hans Kierstead (subject of a bizarre scandal - he says he tried to break up a drunken fight, the other story says he drunkenly punched a female student in the face, he was exonerated but who knows what really happened). A giant intra-party clusterfuck resulted in them splitting the endorsements and polling exactly equally. When I canvassed, several people told me they had already "voted for the Democrat." When I asked them which one, they said, "Uh, the one whose name starts with an H."
Hans and Harley are currently only 73 votes apart, with absentee and provisional ballots still being counted. 12,000 people voted for some Democrat who wasn't either of them.
In cheerier news, the Democrat I preferred in my closest swing district (CA-25 - Simi Valley/Santa Clarita, currently held by Trump fan Steve Knight), Katie Hill, has a 2 point lead over the alternative, Bryan Caforio. I look forward to campaigning for her.
The big problem is apathy. I can't tell you how many people told me they don't vote, don't want to, and don't want to tell me why. I get them not wanting to talk to some annoying person accosting them, but CA really does have wretched turnout among registered voters, and a lot of it seems to be "Who cares?/They all suck/Nothing ever changes." I have some good arguments against all of those, but the non-voters don't want to talk about it, so I can't present them.
I think I'm going to start cold-calling high schools and see if they'll let me come in and register/pre-register students to vote. (In California you can pre-register at age 16, and be automatically registered when you turn 18.) There should be a fair number of people who just turned 18 or will be 18 by November. I have overall gotten a much better response at high schools than anywhere else. (College students are constantly rushing to class and/or not interested, people at libraries are already registered, and DMVs/groceries/etc will kick you off their property.)
Oh yeah, and it looks like Gavin Newsom will be our next governor, since he's squaring off with some generic Trump-favored Republican. I look forward to Trump resistance, more housing (hopefully affordable), and high-speed rail.
It was a pretty chaotic primary due to California's weird "jungle primary" system in which the top two candidates advance regardless of party, Democratic enthusiasm resulting in multiple Democratic candidates splitting the vote, and Democratic candidate egos resulting in low-polling candidates refusing to drop out. It's preliminarily looking like we avoided the disaster of having Democrats locked out of the ballot in November in races they might have otherwise won, but it won't be a sure thing for a few more days. Some races are extremely close (like, under 100 votes), there's absentee ballots still to be counted, and an apparent clerical error in LA left 119,000 voters off the rolls so they had to vote provisionally.
I have been canvassing in District CA-48, among other places, which is currently held by Dana Rohrbacher (commonly known as R-Moscow.) There were EIGHT Democratic candidates, three of whom dropped out but too late to be removed from the ballot (all three of them got 1% or more of the vote), and many more polling at impossible-to-win numbers but refusing to drop out.
The top two D candidates are Harley Rouda (a former Republican who donated to Republicans as late as 2016) and Hans Kierstead (subject of a bizarre scandal - he says he tried to break up a drunken fight, the other story says he drunkenly punched a female student in the face, he was exonerated but who knows what really happened). A giant intra-party clusterfuck resulted in them splitting the endorsements and polling exactly equally. When I canvassed, several people told me they had already "voted for the Democrat." When I asked them which one, they said, "Uh, the one whose name starts with an H."
Hans and Harley are currently only 73 votes apart, with absentee and provisional ballots still being counted. 12,000 people voted for some Democrat who wasn't either of them.
In cheerier news, the Democrat I preferred in my closest swing district (CA-25 - Simi Valley/Santa Clarita, currently held by Trump fan Steve Knight), Katie Hill, has a 2 point lead over the alternative, Bryan Caforio. I look forward to campaigning for her.
The big problem is apathy. I can't tell you how many people told me they don't vote, don't want to, and don't want to tell me why. I get them not wanting to talk to some annoying person accosting them, but CA really does have wretched turnout among registered voters, and a lot of it seems to be "Who cares?/They all suck/Nothing ever changes." I have some good arguments against all of those, but the non-voters don't want to talk about it, so I can't present them.
I think I'm going to start cold-calling high schools and see if they'll let me come in and register/pre-register students to vote. (In California you can pre-register at age 16, and be automatically registered when you turn 18.) There should be a fair number of people who just turned 18 or will be 18 by November. I have overall gotten a much better response at high schools than anywhere else. (College students are constantly rushing to class and/or not interested, people at libraries are already registered, and DMVs/groceries/etc will kick you off their property.)
Oh yeah, and it looks like Gavin Newsom will be our next governor, since he's squaring off with some generic Trump-favored Republican. I look forward to Trump resistance, more housing (hopefully affordable), and high-speed rail.
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Interestingly enough, turnout for the primary was really low (even for a primary) but I personally know a lot of people who normally don't vote in primaries who voted in this one. Not sure what's up with that. TBH I often don't vote in primaries (I don't hear about them in time, I forget about them, I don't have strong feelings about the candidates, etc) but I was fired up for this one.
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I feel like a lot of the people I talk to here aren't quite opposed to voting, but consider it useless enough that they don't bother if they're tired/have a long work shift that day/have trouble with transit. So you can give them the whole argument and they'll agree with you on all of your points, and then still be kind of "eh" about showing up. (Eg. The friend I was talking to about this today who agreed with that and then was like "...and here I am, not voting in the primary.")
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I'd be curious to hear what your experience is with them.
Re: your experience: I give people a pitch for voting by mail. It's much easier and it prevents exactly the issues you're talking about. You can also arrange for people to get a ride to their polling place - their local Swing Left group should be able to drive anyone anywhere within their area. However, there wasn't much demand for that, I think partly because setting up a ride is also a hassle, but mostly because the people who had that sort of issue but really wanted to vote are voting by mail. If they like the experience of voting in person (I do) they can get their ballot by mail, fill it out at home, then bring it in person to their polling place.
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I wonder how "If you show up at the polls this fall and flip the legislature, they'll pass no excuse mail in voting, and you'll never have to show up in person ever again" would do as a voting pitch.
I'll let you know how it goes! I just looked up a couple of events in my closest swing district and there are a few voting/canvassing drives not too far away. Unfortunately I am about to start a new job and have no idea what my schedule is going to be, so I can't commit to anything just yet.
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Let me know if the "Vote to vote by mail!" pitch works. It sure sounds good to me.
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I'm definitely going to keep it in reserve for the "Well, I don't know" and "I guess" people now that I've thought of it.
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Now, why that hasn't been changed in the last 100 years since we got 5-day work weeks and the franchise was expanded and we have cars and things, that I can't tell you other than inertia, but there really was logic at the time the convention of voting on Tuesdays was established.
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Of course, the pesky problem in a pluralistic society is that there is not just one sabbath.
Then I wondered why we don't get a holiday for voting, and the answer was just as sadly obvious: heaven forbid any company have to pay rank and file workers more in this day and age.
Also, given that my friggin city insists on having its municipal elections on a different day than the statewide primary or actual election, I already have to vote at least three times a year, and in this economic climate, the fact that states vote on different days for primaries means that you can't have a federal holiday for all voting days, no matter what.
So the weirdly localized part strikes again.
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Thanks for working to register voters!
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I'm dying for Wisconsin to get a Democratic governor, but our primary isn't until August and we have something like 9 Democratic gubernatorial candidates right now, >_<
I have what might be a weird/annoying question, so feel free to give it a pass & not answer if you don't want to. I've been curious about SwingLeft and like-organizations. Does it feel weird to be visiting other districts (i.e., that you don't live in) to encourage people to vote a particular way?
I don't mean in the 'what if they realize I don't live in the community!' way, because presumably most people would not.
But more like, registering people to vote is one thing, but I feel way less comfortable saying, "Hey, Person X, you should vote for Candidate Y to represent you." It's a different vibe than calling/going door-to-door in places where we share the same representatives - where I can say, "We should vote for x to represent us."
It came up on a panel I was recently on about the 2018 midterms, and it's a thing I've been really curious about. I know that things like McCain's last-minute floor vote on a procedural move regarding the repeal of the ACA last fall had a profound effect on many who don't live in Arizona, for example.
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We also had an overabundance of D gubernatorial candidates! That worked out fine, though, because Newsom was a strong and early frontrunner. It was a solid slate with no real bad choices, and everyone I spoke to personally took a long time to decide. I actually voted for someone who was not my first choice because I hoped to have two Ds on the November ballot to discourage Republican turnout, but sadly it didn't work.
Yes, it does feel weird to go out of town, TBH. It's especially awkward because I'm often going to areas that I have never been to before and in one case literally did not know there was a town there! I feel like a carpetbagger. I try to go with someone local so it's not a total invasion of the out of towners.
That being said, the few times when people have asked me, I've answered honestly and said that I'm fired up to get a Democrat elected, but I live in Culver City which went something like 75% for Hilary. In every case, people have said they're impressed that I drove all that way, so it came across well rather than not.
I will probably campaign more in 25 than in 48 solely because I genuinely like the 25 Democratic nominee and can honestly enthuse about her, while I do not like either of the candidates in 48 (the possible drunk-puncher vs the ex-Republican).
I also might do a little campaigning in my own district just to increase Democratic turnout in general. It'd be pretty fun to knock on doors in my own neighborhood.
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Granted, I was filtering some of the lists to remove the ones who didn't raise any campaign money on the grounds they weren't likely to be serious contenders. I agree that's not an ideal filter parameter, and it's not sure to catch the ones who tried hard and got 1% of the vote.
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Scary part is, the two Republicans together got 52% of the vote. We need to get way more Dems out in November to actually flip CA10.
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Yeah, the get-out-the-vote issue is huge. Have you tried registering voters at local high schools? I find that getting in goes best if you start by emphasizing that voter registration is non-partisan.
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And thanks for reminding me! I've been meaning to get in on registering new citizens, but it slipped my mind. I feel that that would be very fun and heartwarming, in addition to probably netting many new Democrats.
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I mean yes: this is a misunderstanding of the situation. But it's one I could see arising very easily, especially with people who are stressed out or overworked or whatever.
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/california-primary-turnout-will-probably-be-terrible.html
If the independents do turn out and vote Dem, I will be a happy camper.
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I mean I suppose the other side of it is to, naturally, take this as a reason to make lots and lots of noise at people that the midterm actual voting is HELLA IMPORTANT LOOK AT THE LOW PRIMARIES THIS COULD BE DREADFUL etc etc?
But yeah like . . . I sort of try to overlay the kind of awareness, understanding and attitudes of, say, the people I knew in university or the people I met at playgroups and stuff when nannying, and even if they might possibly be motivate-able for the actual election, for the primaries it'd be a hard sell.
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I think it will be much easier to pitch people on the November election, because it's not a primary and the ballots won't be such a clusterfuck. They're voting for governor, senator, and congressperson, mostly. It involves national hot button issues, and a very beloved Democratic senator with high name recognition who swept the ballot in EVERY SINGLE DISTRICT, including ones that went overwhelming Republican for governor. If nothing else I will pitch them on high speed rail, which may not sound very glamorous but people reliably get excited when I start in on it. ("How would you like to have a BULLET TRAIN like they have in Japan that will get you to San Francisco in two and a half hours?")
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(Use taxes are the taxes you are /supposed/ to pay if you buy something in another state and bring it in to California to be used here. particularly if you are buying it in a state without sales tax. Almost no one /does/, mind you, except on really large items like cars and boats for which they will actually go after you on that stuff.)
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There's also the fact that turnout is extremely low even for main elections. There are genuinely a lot of registered voters who don't vote ever, and there's reasons for that. Some is voter suppression, but not all.
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So I kind of suspect that this kind of canvas is not a way that is going to ever reach people willing to tell you that they don't vote/aren't interested. I think there are potentially other ways to reach them, but I also suspect that they would rely way more heavily on finding a way to present them with the relevant info in a way that does not single them out or make them feel specifically Talked At.
I just also suspect that the overall poor turnout for primaries does not in and of itself indicate much about potential turnout for the actual midterms, one way or the other, because to some extent a lot of the people most motivated to vote in the primaries at this point are absolutely going to be doing it on the basis of party-alignment, rather than specific-individual-campaign-platforms. Which is to say, if you're really invested in turning Cali blue (and especially if you don't realize that there could be a shut-out of the Democrats completely!), then you actually have even less reason to be motivated with a sense of urgency to actually take time out of your life for the primary.
Which: is not a guarantee that there are a lot more of those people, either. I just think that part creates this huge ???? factor that means the primary-turnout is not super relevant for prognosis.
(*literally at that point the leader of the Liberal party was a torture apologist with significant sympathy with the US military operations, which Harper at least didn't say in public, so without me actually being psychic about the future it was pretty hard to choose between them)
(so add that to the fact that voting represented "hello have an anxiety attack you won't acknowledge is an anxiety attack but will just beat yourself up for hours for being Too Stupid To Understand Where You Need To Go To Vote" and all sorts of other major mental health damage, and wow was I not motivated to put myself through the psychological anguish involved to decide between Harper and Ignatieff and party platforms that were basically the same thing except calling the other side a liar)
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It's true that turnout is poor for primaries in general. Like I said, I often don't vote in them either. However, turnout is also historically poor in general for midterms. It's concerning because the stakes are unusually high for this particular one.
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And, of course, in California you can say 'Look, it's the top two going to the final ballot - you want to make sure that at least one of them is the person you want.'
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While it may be more traditional and more local-grassroots to campaign in your home district, the Representatives and Senators who are elected will make the law for the whole U.S., so support their campaigns as you will. (Only *vote* in your own district.)
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This way if you have one Democrat getting 35% of the total vote and one getting 30% and then a Republican at 20% and some other people with smaller results, the final ballot will have two Democrats. But, of course, this works similarly going the other way. And it works best when you have 2-4 candidates per party rather than 12 Democrats, 8 Republicans, and 12 minor party and no-party affiliation candidates. (Part of the problem with this particular primary is that we ended up with a lot of races which looked like 'A: 35%, B: 18%, C: 18% (but a few actual votes lower), D: 17%, E: 10%, F: 4%, G: 3%,...')
It also allows people who are registered as Independents to vote for the major party candidates which they would like to support (even if they don't always vote for the same party in every race.)
There really are a lot of good reasons for it, but this particular election is pretty much a worst case scenario.
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Not as thrilled that we also have a top two primary, even though sometimes it means I get a general election choice between two progressive Democrats.
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And a thousand cheers to the last paragraph.
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Also, we don't do that weird jungle primary thing--it sounds like a goddamn mess!--and so because of gerrymandering, the primaries are effectively the total race in several districts. So we had, for example, a very hotly-contested primary for my state rep district that went into a primary runoff because whoever wins will with about 95% certainty become the new state rep. We had tons and tons of really aggressive progressives with strong campaigns tackling Dem districts across the state, too--I really think we're going to flip Texas overall within the next, mmm, ten years or so as the small victories encourage Texans to actually believe it can be done. The biggest scandal I've seen was the national party interfering in a DCCC primary to back a more centrist candidate against a more progressive one without really actually checking in with folks in her district, pissing off people in town heavily--the national party is not popular among Texan progressives, what with the whole repeatedly totally abandoning us thing. Which.... Texas is nearly as big as Cali, what are they thinking?
It's always really interesting to hear what perspectives are across the nation! I teach at UT Austin, and my students are very very invested in voting to the point of at least one student climbing onto her chair and yelling at everyone to get registered and giving people advice about how to register in a slow point of class last winter. (I teach genetics lab, mostly to seniors, so it's not like they're all politicians either.) It's possible that the college kids are giving you lukewarm results because the ones who give any shits at all have already been registered by student groups.
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This.
So much this.
And I do not understand that at all.
As you might imagine, I routinely talk to my classes about these issues, and I hear variations on that a lot. I even tried reverse psychology with the first years by giving them an article about how low information voters are too poorly informed to vote, so they shouldn't. (An argument that would have had me howling from rooftops in rage when I was their age. Mind you, at the time I was there age, I was either in a Deep South state or had recently escaped from one, so the whole idea of a voter literacy test had a very particular and very horrifying resonance for me at their age.)
Nothing seems to work.
I do not understand.
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Nothing ever changes because people decided not to change it by NOT VOTING.