Democrats’ “Last Mile” problem
by Tom Sullivan
Used with permission. Copyright ScienceCartoonsPlus.com
Democrats need to address a political version of the Last Mile problem this November and going forward.
I warned during a webinar for NC county Democratic officers on Saturday I was about to commit blasphemy. Between now and the close of the polls on November 6th, I did not want them to focus all their efforts on getting people to the polls.
Wait. What did he say?
You know who else is working on getting people to the polls? State and federal legislative caucuses. The state party. The governor. Every candidate. MoveOn, VoteVets, NAACP, Voto Latino, Swing Left, Indivisible, the League of Women Voters, EMILY’s List, OFA, DFA, and a dozen other groups are all working on getting people to the polls. Do you know what they are not working on? What voters do with their ballots once they get there.
Activists who have been poll greeters know how many people vote partial ballots. In 2008, how many first-time voters showed up to cast a vote for Barack Obama with no intention of voting for anybody else? A few weeks ago, an election judge told me she’d pulled blank ballots from ballot boxes. People will go to all the trouble of showing up, she said, and turn in a blank ballot either in protest or because it leaves a public record of them having cast one, even though they didn’t actually vote for anybody.
The job of county committees is a political version of the Last Mile problem in telecommunications. All the high-profile effort and capital spending goes into clearing rights-of-way, erecting towers, and stringing lines. The Last Mile problem is the less conspicuous work of hooking up end users one … by one … by one because that is where companies stop spending money and start making bank.
Everybody and their brothers are working on getting voters to the polls. But Democrats don’t make bank until people actually vote for their candidates, and all the way down the ballot. Oh, they may vote for one or two heavily promoted rock stars up top, but those down-ballot races are our farm team. And if we don’t make bank there, we don’t have a bench.
All the name-brand groups with the budgets and logos focus on getting people to the polls. With their permanent county organizations and precinct structure, completing that last link in the vote-delivery chain is the job of county committees. Because if they don’t do it, it won’t get done.
The focus on voter turnout is vital (and I address how local committees can support that in For The Win). Step 1 is getting the right voters off their couches, out their doors, and to the polls. We don’t bank votes, however, simply by getting people to the polls. The frenetic work that goes into that typically assumes what happens next happens on its own. But banking votes is not like the Sidney Harris cartoon where Step 2 is “THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS” and we win.
It is the reason to provide electioneering training and cover shifts outside polling places during early voting and on Election Day. Poll greeters need to be supplied with easy-to-read sample ballots or slate cards. It is the last opportunity to influence voters’ choices and how they fill out their ballots. And to make sure they do, and all the way to the bottom to minimize the undervote. We don’t pay it near enough attention.
Even many “informed” voters stop dead in their tracks when asked if they know about down-ballot, school board or other nonpartisan races. Yes, we want voters more engaged than that, but the fact is voters dashing in to vote between work, the grocery store, and home are simply looking for reassurance before voting for candidates they don’t know. Or they won’t.
Smile. If you seem trustworthy, they will vote for your candidates. Ideal? No. But that’s how it works. Except it does not work if poll greeters are not there trained and equipped to engage voters as they arrive. (This won’t work for Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, states with vote-by-mail only, or maybe Wyoming where electioneers are permitted no closer to the polling place than 100 yards.)
Democrats could be winning more races in rural districts needed to reclaim state legislatures if they did a better job of both getting voters to the polls and maximizing those voters’ reach once they arrive. I know of no better example than one Jane Mayer wrote about in 2011.
In 2010, directly and through groups he funded, Art Pope, North Carolina’s own mini-Koch brother, threw nearly a million dollars at state Sen. John Snow’s district in North Carolina’s western mountains. Pope groups targeted Snow with two dozen mass mailings. One attack, Mayer wrote, was reminiscent of the infamous Willie Horton ad from 1988. Even after all that money, the last Democratic senator standing in the far west lost his seat by 161 votes in a district spanning 8 counties with an average population under 30,000 – by 2/10ths of 1 percent, less than the undervote in the district’s two largest counties.
So, that’s the Last Mile problem. Democratic county committees (especially rural ones) will need help completing that last link in the vote delivery chain this fall. Be the miracle.
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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.
