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wait till fall you don't get any real chance to make a choice. The primary is very important this year - if we
sent a car around to pick you up, would you make an exception? We need you."
("I intend to vote for Mr. Upright.") "Fine. It cheers me up to hear a person say that. Here is some
literature about him - maybe some of your friends would like to see it. By the way, Mr. Upright is
speaking at our local club next Friday night. Could I drop by and take you with me?"
The field workers will teach each other, through shop talk; from that shop talk you will get better
examples than I can give, examples tailored to your campaign and your community.
One of the easiest ways to train a precinct worker is to send him out with an experienced one for a
single afternoon or evening. You can teach a group at a time by acting out the type cases, using two
experienced workers in an amplified version of the type cases given herein. Do it two ways - the right
way and the wrong way-and you have the basis for an amusing dub program. The wrong ways can be
made very funny by persons of moderate dramatic talent-Joe Roughly arrives smoking a cigarette,
knocks and rings alternately until he wakes the householder or drags her out of her bath, sticks a foot in
the door, gets into an argument, and so forth without end.
I venture to predict that, with the recent enormous strides in visual-aid training, both major parties will
soon have 16-mm. sound pictures available for the use of local dubs covering the above. If such pictures
are supervised by persons intimately acquainted with the problems of the dosed door, then they should
be very useful; otherwise - hmmm! Better taste before you serve.
Get them in the habit of using the 3x5 card. Have a supply at the meetings with a notice that invites them
to place a dime in the saucer for each pack or to take them free if they wish. Show them your own files.
Emphasize that the usefulness of their work depends almost entirely on whether or not they have records
on election day of where the vote is.
Your area managers may show so much talent that they will crowd you and inspire you into better work
yourself; however some of them will simply be message points, persons you can telephone and who in
turn will telephone their several workers or whom you can call
TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT!
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Robert A. HeMein
on to pick up campaign material from the headquarters for redistribution to the individual workers. In
either case the area supervisor must be a person who works in at least one precinct. Otherwise he does
not know the field problems and will botch things for you.
But there is another reason why everyone from the candidate up through the whole organization to the
single precinct worker should do canvassing: The U.S. Army, shortly before World War II, added some
30% to its fire power by arming with rifles or carbines all of the non-coms and officers up to major. The
same result is obtainable in a campaign organization - I have seen more than one campaign in which there
were so many supervisory jobs, special jobs, and headquarters jobs that there were no doorbell pushers;
then they wondered why they lost!
This is a complete reversal of opinion on my part, brought on by experience. In my first campaign I used
to quote Poor Richard: "The overseer's eyes are worth more than his hands." In politics it should be
rephrased, "The overseer's example is worth more than his precept-and it opens his eyes wider and gets
votes in the bargain!"
Your publicity man should ring some doorbells in the district to sample the flavor - but he probably
won't, whether he is paid or unpaid. Still... he can't shoot you for suggesting it.
If your office girl pushes a few doorbells in the evening she will understand the campaign better, but you
will be happy enough if she has a civil tongue, a tight lip, and an ability to not lose track of the details.
Haw to Get a Selected List frim which to Punch Doorbells: Your district has 320,000 residents lodged
behind some 100,000 private doorways. It is most unlikely that you will have enough people to punch
every doorbell. However there are only 70,000 members of our party
in the district and only 25,000 of these may be expected to vote in the primary. They live in some
15,000 separate homes (this is based on statistical examination and is not a casual speculation). The
problem is beginning to be cut down to your size; if you know which 15,000 doorbells in your district,
100 precinct workers plus one tireless candidate plus one manager could ring every doorbell.
Fortunately there are ways to determine with reasonable exactness which doorbells are worth ringing.
The adults in the United States fall into three groups, those who vote in primaries, those who vote in
general elections, and those who don't vote at all. (The membership of the groups and the ratios between
them vary slightly if city elections are considered rather than elections for state and national offices; this
need not concern us at the moment as the principle is unchanged.)
The key to the matter is that these groups, though fuzzy around the edges, remain very largely the same
from year to year, i.e., the citizens who vote in any one primary are almost certain to vote in every
primary, circumstances permitting.
In many or most states it is customary to post outside the polls a roster of the registered voters with a
check mark to show whether or not each person voted and to leave this record published for about a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]