Are you able to make a few calls to help get out the vote?

No, because it’s saturated already. I have been getting calls and texts every other day for months. It’s insane at this point. I think the effort is great, but it’s overboard now. If Wisconsin isn’t getting calls just have some of the people doing Florida switch to Wisconsin, because Florida is blitzed like you can’t imagine. I get the texts for my MIL too. Spanish and English.

I don’t make phone calls but I did just post a whole bunch of letters I wrote to voters in swing states through a campaign spearheaded by my UU congregation. Are you UU, @Call_Me_Jay ?

I’ve done phone banking many times through the organization I work for. I find it frustrating and fruitless, as most people won’t and don’t answer their phones if they don’t know who’s calling. So it’s a lot of dialing and leaving messages.

If I get a voicemail with a long political message, I don’t listen to it, I delete it.

So it was a lot of work for something that seems fruitless and futile.

One call that I think was really good was early on a woman called asking if I needed any help applying for a mail-in ballot or if I had any questions. I already had done it, but I got the impression she would have sat on the phone with me to do the steps online, or told me I can call or email or go in person to the elections office for it. Florida makes it easy, but some people who are intimidated or not ones to inquire just do nothing even though they want to.

Most of the calls and texts are about “counting on my vote for Biden” or “counting on me to vote.”

A friend of mine wasn’t going to order a mail-in, and then when I told her how easy it is and she can still walk it into the elections office or change her mind and vote in person she did it. Moreover, I told her she can order one for her mom, it seemed to me she was just going to not have her mom vote. She followed my advice, and it turned out her husband is out of state now, so because she ordered the ballot he was able to vote. He voted for Trump, so I wonder how he feels about mail-in voting.

If I hadn’t told her about the options maybe one of those phone calls or texts would have. So, they can be useful, but it’s excessive here in Florida.

@janbb I am not UU. I just liked their setup for phone banking.

As to the objections to phoning – I think in-person efforts are better. But with covid that isn’t happening. In previous elections my friends in Illinois would spend weekends in Wisconsin and Michigan drumming up votes. Phone banking is what we have now.

Phone banking for your candidate is probably more effective.

Here’s a hint about who the UU will be encouraging to vote:

“From our work for marriage equality, women’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery, for civil and voting rights, to advocating for a path to citizenship for immigrants, to taking on the ‘New Jim Crow’ and white supremacy today.

Unitarian Universalists have a legacy to carry onward.”

Please don’t start calling Wisconsin, I have got none so far and don’t want to start getting them now

@SergeantQueen I doubt you’ll get a call from “our side.” ;-)

@janbb I don’t want any calls period lol