False phonebanking myths: You don't need to convince people to vote for Bernie. You don't need to be 18. You don't even need to be a U.S. citizen or live in the US. — PHONEBANK!
I'm not old enough to phonebank.
I'm not 18 either, and I've already made 1,621 calls for Bernie. It's not illegal to phonebank at any age.
I don't live in the U.S.
You don't need to live in the United States or be a U.S. citizen either.
I'm not good at convincing people.
Voter ID calls, the most common, don't involve convincing voters. You're simply supposed to ask them two questions — If the voter is going to be voting/caucusing and if they will be voting for Bernie Sanders. That's it.
This helps canvassers eliminate voters who are supporting Clinton or a Republican and target undecideds instead. They do the convincing.
I don't have time to go to a phonebanking event.
Phonebanking events are optional. I phonebank from home and use a phone, but you don't even need that and can use a VoIP system like Google Voice, with just your computer.
It seems difficult.
It's not. You log in to the dialer, and you DO NOT manually dial numbers. The system will forward calls to you, and you click a button on your computer screen when the call is finished. Then in about 20 seconds, another call comes in and you'll hear a ding, then see the script on your screen immediately. Each call takes about 1 minute, and you can do 50–65 in an hour.
I don't feel comfortable giving out my phone number to random people.
You're not calling them directly, the dialer system is. They only see the campaign's phone number, so they can not call back or even see your number. Completely anonymous.
The idea makes me nervous.
For the people that yell at you, it's not scary at all. Sometimes I find it a bit hard to keep from laughing while on the line. Maybe the first 10 calls or so can make you nervous, but it's not a problem once you get used to how it works. People are usually very nice, or they will ask you to take them off their call list.
Please phonebank now!
If just 5% of this subreddit phonebanked for an hour, we would pose a huge threat to Hillary.
Tip: The dialer doesn't track your calls on its own. I use berniepb.com to keep track of how many calls I make, using a Chrome extension. Here's my call record as well: berniepb.com/u/Hi_ImBillOReilly
Posted Feb 25, 2016, 1:40 AM UTC · edited