Lessons from NY -- Physically getting people to show up to the polls in PA and CA
It turns out a LOT of Bernie supporters in NY didn't vote. I'm not talking about the 120,000 purges or the surpressed voters (we need to get to the bottom of those!). I'm talking about the many more thousands of legit, bonafide registered Democrats whose names were on the voter logs, totally undisturbed. Over 75% of them didn't show up to vote.
On NY1, some of the political experts on Inside City Hall have stated that the Clinton machine has a well-organized system of getting supporters to the polls. I'm not talking about just getting verbal pledges, but actually arranging logistics to getting masses of supporters physically out of their homes and into polling precincts. They said Sanders wasn't even close to having such an operation.
So I think for Pennsylvania and California we need to not just rely on pledges. We should end those phonebanks with a call-to-action with a hard followup with logistics. Basically a way to get that person to the poll. Should we drive them? Donate towards Uber taxis? Get shuttle buses? Arrange a voter event/party and ship people out to the polls in waves? I don't know how the Clinton machine does it, but it defintely seems they have their system down pat. I do remember former mayor Mike Bloomberg literally bussed thousands people out to polls to secure his third term win.
Thoughts?
Posted Apr 21, 2016, 6:48 AM UTC
The issue is old people vote young people don't. That's how Hillary does it. Old people won't go to rallies etc but they will vote. Young people will go to rallies but then not vote. It's freaking frustrating.
This is it, in a nutshell.
That is a shame. There were 27,000 Bernie supporters at the big Washinton Square rally. 20,000 out of 27,000 them did NOT vote! That's breathtakingly huge.
I went to a rally in the Bronx. I had to wait on line for two hours, before being transferred to a caged in waiting area for another two hours, only to wait another four hours to actually hear Bernie speak. Eight hours of waiting. No food.
Voting, on the other hand, took me about four minutes, and then a few minutes later I got home and ate.
You can't call yourself a "Bernie supporter" if you don't actually vote for Bernie! Young people make no sense.
The other reason is closed primary. I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of the rally attendees were independents. I have a bunch of friends who went to Bernie events and are Bernie supporters but couldn't vote because they didn't change party affiliation nearly a year ago. Hell, if I still lived in NY I prob also wouldn't be able to vote since I'm pretty sure I was independent there too. The only reason I'm Dem now is Bernie.
i think we might be reaching as many young people as it is possible through partisan means; I think everyone who wants Bernie to win needs to be fighting hard for voter rights / registration push from large high profile companies and public figures. Voting needs to become the cool thing, or a taboo needs to rapidly develop amongst the 18-22 bracket as I assume that's where we are seeing the largest enthusiasm / vote diff.