Pennsylvania:
"Republicans have been tasked by the national Bush/Cheney campaign with turning out 125,152 votes for the president, which would be a record...
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.
http://www.lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/4/9297
WV:
"Republicans claim that Democrats suffer an intensity gap by relying more on hired help. "You can’t buy love," Republican National Chairman Ed Gillespie said.
But you can send it over the Internet. Bush’s campaign corresponds regularly with 6 million supporters via e-mail, who then take national talking points to their neighborhoods or share them online through "virtual precincts."
"We have a large group of committed volunteers who go out every day to their friends and neighbors to try to communicate their views," Nelson said.
Both the Republican and Democratic Parties in West Virginia have dramatically increased their use of e-mail as a means of communication and fundraising.
As early as 18 months ago, the state Democratic Party didn’t have an e-mail database, Scarbro said. Now they have a database packed with 7,000 e-mails of state residents. In addition to door-to-door solicitations and phone calls, Democratic workers also pursue voters in cyberspace, he said.
"We use that network to notify people about events and to notify them about issues," Scarbro said. "They are good fundraising tools to quickly and cheaply make a last minute pitch for extra help on a project."
The Internet has helped the Democrats better compete with Republicans in raising funds, he said.
The West Virginia Republican Party communicated about events and other information among members three years ago largely by paying postage for a newsletter, said Kris Warner, West Virginia Republican Party chairman. Since then, the party has also amassed a large e-mail database, which saves time and money.
"Essentially every message with the team leaders is via the Internet," Warner said.
The push to get voters to come out isn’t limited to simply making contact and disseminating information. The Huntington chapter of the NAACP will get people to the polls on election day in style. The NAACP and OVEC will provide shuttle buses and even limousines to the polls for people in the Fairfield West neighborhood.
"We hope to have a large turnout," said Sylvia Ridgeway, president of the Huntington NAACP. "The word is out and people know how important this election is."
Between now and the election, voters can expect to see what the people of Portsmouth, Ohio, saw last week when canvassers for America Coming Together, who are paid $8 to $10 an hour, walked through a neighborhood carrying $200 Tungsten handheld computers. They found Angela Leedom, whose husband was laid off last year from his utility lineman job and is working in Florida after the hurricanes. Leedom told ACT worker Carissa McCann, "Bush had his chance. We’re voting Kerry."
"Wonderful," replied McCann, a Shawnee State University student, recording the Leedom names in her computer.
On Nov. 2, Leedom can expect to get another call or visit -- even a ride to the polls."
http://www.herald-dispatch.com/2004/October/24/LNspot.htm