2014 mid-term canvassing ‘hook line’ that works like crack
I started out my EV canvassing effort today with one simple line that turned every single person on, less a few grumpy Republis spouses. It was like giving crack to a drug addict or favored odds to a gambleholic. And it’s so obvious.
After the scripted introduction about trying to encourage them to EV I would smile and inform them, that “you know, it’s expected that 4 out of 5 voters will not be voting in the mid-terms, so if you vote, you vote as five people; you vote as one for yourself and the four others who didn’t.”
So many of them either got bright eyed or turned their head as if to say, whaaaat???, it was comical.
Having captured their attention, I’d then sell them on how they could influence the election and encouraged them to vote anywhere there was an EV voting location. Some people thought they had to vote at one specific location when voting early. “No,” I said, you may vote at any EV location and I ran down the list of them. That got them interested too.
For the split-party households where a Republis answered the door, but their spouse was listening nearby, they’d roll their eyes in discomfort when I ran through my hook line. “Don’t say that," they’d say, half jokingly. “I’ll never hear the end of it!”
I ended the canvassing effort feeling very positive at having left so many targeted democratic or IAP voters feeling good about going forward with voting. Some clearly were on the ‘ho-hum’ fence or had not planned on voting this time around.
Score 20+ for me and all of you today! And I’ll be back at it again tomorrow. What fun!
Pass it on or give it a try for yourself.
= new reply since forum marked as read
when handing in my clipboard and results.
His reaction was the same, whaaaat????, putting a smile on his face and getting him to thinking.
If this works, it could be a game changer. Or so I'd like to think. 
GOTV 2014!!!
Actually, the argument that "your vote will count as four" is a bit disingenuous, because, while true, everybody else who votes will have their vote count equally as four too.
But it is certainly true that a voter who votes when the election turnout is small influences the outcome more than when the turnout is large, so it's close enough to true for me to use this line, 
In our area the statistic is more realistically 6 out of 7 voters not voting, as compared with eligible voters and that was before I went out, so to use the national stat, 4 out of 5, seemed a safe conservative ratio. And whether it's 2 out of 3 or 7 out 8, it still doesn't change the fact that those who are not planning on voting are mistaken in their thinking that the influence their one vote has is just one vote. In a mid-term, one vote has a lot more statistical influence than in a general presidential election. I think most of those replying earlier got it.
If you can say something that's truthful and excites non-voters, something that makes them feel better and more likely to cast their ballot, I'm all for it. The plain vanilla script given to most canvass workers probably won't get much as compared with something that really gets them to thinking and making EV higher on their priority list.
It's about GOTV and not about deceiving anyone. If it was, I wouldn't do it and I would certainly not go on a worldwide forum and boast about it.
What I'd love to hear is whether one of you gave it a try and if it made a difference. Maybe I'm full of poo. But if every canvasser had some hook-line like this that instantly turned on democrats who haven't EV'd yet, it would have a positive cascading effect from that moment forward.
