Don’t vote early? Expect to get call (get out the vote plans)

Lancaster Newspapers, PA ^ | October 24, 2004 | Helen Colwell-adams

[Cincinatus' Wife]

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - A busload of John Kerry supporters from Washington, D.C., was waving Kerry/Edwards placards Saturday in Penn Square.

Teams of volunteers from a Democrat-leaning national organization are knocking on doors in the city.

And some voters can expect to find a soap opera star on their front steps Monday, asking them to vote for President George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter.

With voter registration at a close for the Nov. 2 election, the political parties are marshaling hundreds of volunteers for the next step in the election game: voter contact and voter turnout.

Get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, drives may be the most critical element of a campaign. In a presidential campaign whose focus is the ground game, expect local GOTV efforts to be record in scope.

Republicans are closely guarding their plans for strategic reasons.

Democrats think they will have 800 volunteers working on election day to get Kerry voters to the polls.

Building excitement is a key to turnout. That’s what President Bush’s Wednesday rally at the Lancaster Airport, and a Democrat rally tonight featuring Carol Moseley Braun, are intended to do.

Fueled by the “527” organizations, voters of all parties already have been swamped with mailings aimed either at motivating the base or energizing people who vote on issues rather than on party lines.

Republicans have been tasked by the national Bush/Cheney campaign with turning out 125,152 votes for the president, which would be a record.

County Democrat chairman Bruce Beardsley said he thinks the party can produce 70,000 votes for Kerry.

Count on this: If you don’t vote by early afternoon on Nov. 2, some party will be looking for you.

Rolling out the big gun

One of the best GOTV tools in the Republicans’ arsenal is coming to town Wednesday.

The visit to the Lancaster Airport by President Bush is expected to fire up the GOP faithful, as his trip to Hershey last week did.

As Bush supporters entered Republican headquarters Saturday to pick up tickets for the Wednesday rally, some were asked if they would be willing to help by making calls to voters at the campaign’s phone bank.

Republicans, whose biggest margins are in the suburban and rural parts of the county, can be expected to rely on phone calls and neighbor-to-neighbor contact to encourage potential Bush voters to get to the polls.

Chad Weaver, a co-chairman of the county Bush/Cheney campaign, was cagey about GOTV plans. Poll watchers and workers are being trained, he said, and “hundreds of volunteers” will be mobilized for election-day efforts.

Standard GOTV tools on election day involve poll watchers armed with lists of voters identified as supporters. As each voter checks in at the poll, the watcher crosses off the name.

Periodically, other volunteers take names of voters who haven’t turned out yet and start phoning or visiting the missing voters.

“We’re going to do whatever we can to encourage as many Lancastrians to come out and support the president on election day,” Weaver said.

Republicans also are going door-to-door in the city and suburbs. Monday afternoon, a local celebrity – Manheim Township High School and Franklin & Marshall College alumna Jennifer Gareis, who plays Grace on the soap opera “The Young and the Restless,” will be out stumping for Bush and Specter. The trek is organized by Specter’s campaign.

“She wanted to do something for Sen. Specter and President Bush while she was in town,” said Jess Yescalis, a local consultant for Specter and friend of Gareis’.

The national Bush campaign also is encouraging Republicans to each recruit two new Bush voters before election day.

Republicans here are being asked to work harder than ever.

The GOP-dominated “T” in central Pennsylvania has to perform strongly to help offset Kerry’s expected big margins in Philadelphia and some of its suburbs.

U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, a statewide Republican leader, has said that part of the reason Bush lost Pennsylvania to Al Gore in 2000 was that Republicans were blindsided by a surprisingly strong Democrat GOTV drive in Philadelphia.

An army of 800

Look for some of the same tactics that worked in 2000 for the Democrats to be employed here too.

With county Democrats posting strong registration gains from April to November, the party is now looking to make sure they vote.

Democrats and independents are being bombarded with mailings from the “527” organizations – ostensibly independent, but leaning toward one candidate or another, like America Coming Together and MoveOn.org – on Kerry’s behalf.

Another 45,000 pieces of literature have been mailed by the local party, with another 25,000 handed out at homes and community events.

Last Sunday, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, of Hispanic descent, spoke in Lancaster to energize the Hispanic community. Tonight at the Conestoga Lodge of Elks on South Duke Street, former U.S. senator Carol Moseley Braun will keynote a rally from 4 to 9 as part of the mobilization effort.

And, since much of the party’s strength is in urban areas, house-by-house vote hunts are happening daily.

Beardsley, the county chairman, said about 800 volunteers will be on the streets by election day, including poll watchers at each voting district and a team of attorneys ready to battle any election problems.

The Democrats’ force will include local party workers and activists from out-of-the-area unions.

Beardsley said the party has identified 60,000 to 65,000 voters “who we expect to vote our way,” whether Democrat, independent or Republican.

“All of these people will be contacted one way or the other by election day,” he said, with phone calls, literature drops or mailings.

He thinks the Democrats can expect 70,000 votes for Kerry, in contrast to Gore’s 56,000 in 2000.

In a boost for the Democrats, a team from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has been doing voter contact work in the city in recent days.

ACORN held a registration drive in Lancaster just before the Oct. 4 deadline.

One resident described the ACORN workers as “really aggressively tracking down voters. They are all from out of town. I have never seen this intensity in my neighborhood.”

Wes Lathrop, an ACORN spokesman in Philadelphia, said he believes all or nearly all of the roughly eight people here are local. They’ll be working through election day on voter contact and turnout.

City voters also got personal visits Saturday from a team of Kerry/Edwards volunteers bused in from the Washington area.

In addition to going door-to-door, some of the activists lined the sidewalks in Penn Square on Saturday and waved Kerry signs at passersby.

Cindy Shogan and Alina Stefanescu, two of the sign crew, said D.C. teams from the Kerry campaign have been coming to Pennsylvania recently to work in a swing state.

The goal: to turn out voters.

“This,” Beardsley said, “is where elections are won or lost.”

[Cincinatus' Wife]

We're fast approaching the finish line.

[clee1]

Thank God!

I don't know how much more of this I can take.

[Glenn]

As Sean Hannity is prone to repeating, "Let not your heart be troubled". I've got a good feeling about this election.

[blondee123]

As Sean Hannity is prone to repeating, "Let not your heart be troubled". I've got a good feeling about this election.

Hope he knows more about stopping the voter fraud than he is telling!

[Glenn]

Hope he knows more about stopping the voter fraud than he is telling!

Here is what you should anguish over:

We will have to defeat Hillary in '08! That's something to really keep you up at night.

[backhoe]

Click the picture & goto "last" for the latest on Vote Fraud:

...and a note from your compiler of links- near the "last" are links about ACORN, Project Vote, PIGRIM, and other far-Left pressure groups who hide under the "activist" label while subverting representative government.

These nasty characters demean and dilute the value of everyone's vote.

The plan, besides their hope of throwing the election to sKerry, is to so thoroughly corrupt the election results that Mr. Bush will either not be taken seriously, or open to impeachment.

You had better take this stuff seriously- it is a dagger aimed at the heart of the Republic.

[Oreo Kookey]

"You had better take this stuff seriously - it is a dagger aimed at the heart of the Republic."

You are so right. Electing sKerry is just the first wave of "new terror" from within. That dagger just scratches the surface. If he wins, that dagger is poised at this nation as tyranny has never been waged against us before. If I'm wrong, so be it but I don't honestly think I am. I fear John Kerry as I would fear SARS or aids or cancer 10,000 muggers in a dark alley.

[deport]

We're fast approaching the finish line.

---

Or maybe the start of the long protracted legal battle afterwards...... In either case I'm ready for it to be over......

[weegee]

Teams of volunteers from a Democrat-leaning national organization are knocking on doors in the city.

And some voters can expect to find a soap opera star on their front steps Monday, asking them to vote for President George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter.

So the Republicans are sending out soap opera stars while the Democrats are sending out convicted felons. I guess they are hoping it IS easier to catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Democrats have been using Knock & Drag efforts to pull people to the polls. Convicted felons are among the (paid) "volunteers" that they send door to door. In the 1997 Houston mayoral race (which had influence from the national DNC including participation by King Rat himself, Terry McAwful) the "knock and drag" teams were sent through the same neighborhoods three times on election day. You'd better have a good excuse for their hired goon squad why you AREN'T voting today. Now that we get reciepts (because of electronic voting) I'm sure that some may ask to see them; just imaging them wanting to get a look to see that their victims "voted right" if the names of the choices were printed on the receipt. The media will NEVER characterize knock and drag (the official name for the technique) as INTIMIDATION but that is what it is.

[weegee]

Another thing missed in this article is that Lancaster County has a sizeable Amish population. No phones so the parties must go door to door (or talk with an elder of the community).

Soap opera stars may be attractive but they don't have tvs so name recongition won't have much effect.

[weegee]

If you contracted an illness or were a victim of crime, there would at LEAST be someplace you could turn. John Kerry will offer us the worst policies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (and I mean this on an international scale, not just domestic).

With the rest of the world going socialist, where is an expat to go?