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GOTV !

© Hunter

GOTV - Get Out The Vote is something different to each campaign.

To someone that has been around campaigns a long time it means what seems to be mountains of small projects that must be coordinated in the last days of the campaign.

In Getting Out The Vote, don't bother concentrating on every voter in your district. You need only concentrate on those people that you feel are going to vote for you at the polls. These are the names that you acquire while going door-to-door, those people that have put lawn signs in their yards and those that you find out are supporting you through calls made from the telephone banks.

It is a known fact that on the years when the presidential elections are held there is a bigger voter turnout. On off-years when there is not, it is most important for you to get you people to the polls. It is a fact that usually only 25 percent of eligible voters show up at the polls at this time.

A well-coordinated Get Out The Vote should concentrate on moving 10 percent of the vote.

There are several ways of doing this: direct mail, door-to-door, phone banks, or town hall-type meetings.

You will need to establish a GOTV organization at least 30 days prior to election day. The campaign manager will need to make a list of activities to be accomplished, who will do them and how long each will take.

You need not worry much about having enough volunteers to do the projects; at crunch time, volunteers will usually seem to come out of the woodwork. If they don't, you can always fall back on calling the boy or girl scouts or other organizations. As with any of this type of activity, you need to have a central location where people can come and eat. So, you need on your volunteer list several people who are willing to cook up a crock-pot of chili or make sandwiches, etc. If this isn't possible, you need to use some of your hard-earned campaign funds to treat the volunteers to a pizza party.

This is in following with a previous article about keeping your volunteers happy. Volunteers will devote many more hours to your campaign if they are treated well. You must also keep in mind that you may want to recruit them again for another future campaign.

Assign a GOTV coordinator to make the dozens of little decisions that will have to be made, to create and post a central calendar of times, dates and locations of projects.

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