Small Town Politics

By Jill Black

 After a nail-biting, emotionally-draining year of watching what some people call the most gripping election campaign of modern times, the election now comes down to the opinion of the much-touted undecided voter. Who is this stubbornly indecisive population and why are they taking so long to make up their minds?

Untold millions have been spent by the candidates in trying to woo this elusive electoral subset, who now stand poised as the true deciders in this election year’s final hours. Pundits have talked themselves hoarse attempting to characterize their bias and pin down their final leanings. Whose attention wasn’t riveted by the little squiggly lines on the screen during the CNN televised version of the debate, the output of 30 undecided voters and their handheld response-dialers? And yet, despite the fact that they clearly were pleased or displeased with the two candidates’ performance, at the end of the evening many of them remained steadfastly undecided. Who wouldn’t hold out on making a decision if but to bask for a bit longer in the steady outpouring of national, even international, attention?

Even now, on the very eve of the election, some 6.4 percent of voters still cannot make up their mind for whom they will be casting their vote. Even after the many dozens of debates, the two conventions, the endless interviews, television appearances, newspapers articles, radio spots, the differences between the two candidates laid out in such sharp relief, these voters still haven’t figured it out. At this late stage of the game, you have to be trying pretty hard to avoid paying attention to the campaign, suggesting that maybe these undecideds never intended to vote in the first place.

And Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center has discovered just that–the undecided voters are in large part people who will not be voting on Tuesday. Kohut says that undecided voters typically fall into three general categories: those who are torn between the candidates, those who disengaged and not following the campaign, and those who are nonvoters.

Kohut’s research finds that a majority of the voters are women, at 63 percent. Many are less educated and more religious than their more decisive counterparts, and they also tend to make less money, so maybe don’t have as much time to be obsessing over politics. Of those who will cast a ballot, Kohut finds that they will be divided fairly evenly, with a slightly higher tendency to vote for McCain than voters who have already made up their minds.

Some polls show that in the swing states, such as Florida and Missouri, the number of undecided voters is larger than the lead of either candidate. So it seems that by playing coy, we will all be waiting breathlessly to see just how Josephine the voter decides to vote, if she votes at all. And perhaps we all should thank her for keeping us all so busy these last months. Without the undecided voters, the candidates wouldn’t have had anyone to spend their ad dollars on, Gallup wouldn’t have had anyone to write their debate questions for the last debate, and we wouldn’t have had any reason to keep watching this campaign so intently to its very end. So thank you for adding some suspense to what would otherwise have been a foregone conclusion to this election year!

Jill works for Inside Houston real estate. Their site has information on different suburbs of Houston like Clear Lake real estate and Woodlands real estate. They also provide general information on the Houston real estate market.

Politics

local government politics

By Emilie Nottle

 I’m really not the sort of person who’s interested enough in politics to be compelled to take time out of my busy schedule to help a political candidate. If I have any free time, I’d rather be working on my little art projects. However, something very interesting happened recently. Somehow, a few months before the presidential election, I got inspired to help Obama.

Like many others, I’d been freaked out about the state of our country and our world. At one point, all the bad news just kept piling up. The economy has been going downhill for a long time, but only recently did people start noticing; and I was worrying about what will happen when China decides to stop buying our debt.

With gasoline at $4 per gallon and rising at the time, our fuel and energy situation clearly didn’t look sustainable. Weird climate changes and strong hurricanes were making the global warming problem a little harder to ignore. I was worried about having no health insurance…

And of course I’d been upset about the war. As far as I’m concerned, there is no good reason to start a war. Most Americans have no understanding of the horrors of war on a deep level. It’s just all so abstract when it’s half way across the world. Now there are two wars to be upset about.

And here was a presidential candidate who was saying all the things we all wanted to hear, with real, coherent ideas and plans. I actually heard a calling. I somehow felt compelled to help Obama win, and the feeling was too strong to ignore.

What’s interesting to me is that so many others heard the calling, and like me, many of them were not the activist types. It was like a large number of people woke up at the same time. We all realized that if things keep going in the same direction, things could get very ugly very quickly.

Many of the volunteers I met have never worked on a political campaign before either. Some of them took months out from their busy lives, flocking to the swing states, just to help the cause, which was pretty amazing in itself. There were busloads of college kids from New York, here to help in the final weeks.

There were so many volunteers here in Pittsburgh, PA, that we needed many local headquarters locations, and more were being added all the time, to have more space for phone banking, and getting the canvassing shifts started.

My friend Lance, who’s the Outreach/Student Coordinator for the Santa Clara, CA election board, said, “Our county had an almost 90% voter turnout. Everything about the election was unusual and amazing - even months ago. We are a non partisan organization, and offer the same services to all political parties and campaigns. During the summer, I was training Obama precinct captains on voter registration, and their foot soldiers - 15 and 16 year old teenagers - would show up at our office every week for more voter registration forms. I received 1900 applications to work in this election from the high school student program - usually we get about 600.”

I wasn’t really aware of the extent of what was happening until I too decided to help. I just walked into one of the local headquarters, and asked how I can be helpful.

Again, something interesting happened. I got on the Obama email list, and started getting a couple of emails every day. These emails kept me posted on what was going on, encouraged me to get involved and most had a donate button, so that people could donate to the campaign.

The whole campaign was funded by regular people like me, without taking any money from special interests. Most other political candidates can be bought, but not this one. Even the brokest of the broke in this country, can afford to chip in a few bucks for a cause they believe in. With everyone giving whatever they could, apparently these contributions did add up and did the job.

This campaign used email and the internet like no other political campaign I’m aware of. I’ve been saving these emails.

I have emails from James Fogarty, the team leader from my local headquarters; from Barack Obama; Joe Biden; Michelle Obama; David Plouffe - the brilliant campaign manager for Obama for America; Craig Schirmer, Pennsylvania State Director, Obama for America; Eric Greenwald, Voter Protection Director, Pennsylvania Campaign for Change; Al Gore; Marianne Markowitz, Chief Financial Officer, Obama for America. There’s certainly some direct communication going on, making me feel like I’m in the loop, like I’m being treated like an intelligent adult.

I’m recognizing all the internet marketing strategies used in business, employed in this brilliant campaign. Marketing research shows that you usually need to make at least 7 contacts with a prospect before he or she decides to work with you. Hence the repetition with emails, phone calls and home visits in the campaign. Many people were annoyed that we pestered them so often, but you can’t argue with results. We had unprecedented voter turnouts here in PA, not to mention all the volunteers and donors.

There are YouTube videos put out by the campaign, designed to inform and involve the public. I got lots of these videos in the emails from the campaign. You can watch any speech or debate that you missed, as well as a wide variety of campaign related videos posted by a wide variety of people. Surely, the media has normally been a very powerful catalyst in politics, but media + internet takes it to a whole new level. Not only can we watch the videos any time, and as often as we want, but anyone can make their own campaign related videos and post them on YouTube, therefore truly having an uncensored voice.

I’ve been blown away by the extent to which every American has had an opportunity to be informed and involved in this campaign. While the US has been fighting wars in the name of democracy in far away lands, our own democracy has been lagging to say the least. You can’t have democracy when no one is paying attention; democracy requires involvement and participation. Americans got too comfortable and too distracted by their televisions, video games, pro sports, and other fun distractions.

On November 5th, I got a very gracious thank you email from Barack Obama:

Emilie —

I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.

We just made history.

And I don’t want you to forget how we did it.

You made history every single day during this campaign — every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it’s time for change.

I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.

We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.

But I want to be very clear about one thing…

All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,

Barack

I was very much moved by this email, but I hadn’t even thought about what comes next. But of course, this was only the beginning. The campaign has built up so much momentum, it would be a huge waste to stop here. If we could get an unlikely candidate elected with just grass roots and internet strategies, couldn’t we do something similar, to help create the change we want to see? Even the president of the United States can’t do it alone.

Today, I got an email from John Podesta, from the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team; that includes a video of a meeting of our Energy and Environment Policy Transition Team, an interview with team member Heather Zichal, and a link I can click on to submit my ideas. When was the last time your federal government asked you for your ideas?

In the spirit of continued communication, Barack Obama is creating very short, weekly addresses, and posting them on YouTube.

Now, with every email I get from the campaign, with every video I watch, I realize that something magical is happening - something many of us have been hoping for, but were too cynical to really expect it to happen.

The problem is, I don’t think everyone realizes this yet, and I know that not everyone is on Obama’s email list, and not everyone scours Video Sift for the latest Obama videos. This is what motivated me to write this article. I think it’s important for everyone to be aware, to get involved, because this is what Democracy was supposed to be all about in the first place.

Emilie Nottle is a graphic/web designer, online strategist, and principal at Zooop Design - a full service graphic and web design firm.

Politics

local politics