My sister (for whom I'm diarying this) has been having an ongoing discussion with ACT volunteers and staff over what amounts to harrassment. Here's an e-mail from her this morning:
We mailed our ballots off this morning. I'm hoping this means the phone calls will stop. I finally called the local office of ACT and asked to be removed from the database. The girl who answered just laughed when I told her how many times we've been called. I told her it was no laughing matter, and that they were doing more harm than good if this is the way they are treating voters who are on the fence. There's a certain smugness about these volunteers. The only exception has been the two older women who were canvassing for the local Ds last week. Sure hope
this overzealousness isn't hurting Kerry's chances here.
She's been called and door-knocked to the point of asking to be taken out of their database. While the harrassment didn't change her vote, some of her husband's co-workers have said that they're getting so tired of being bothered by ACT volunteers they're almost ready to vote for Bush out of spite.
There are numerous issues raised by this in my mind, detailed below the fold.
First, Sis said she saw on one canvasser's list (he came to the door despite the fact that she's been canvassed and called at least a half dozen times a week in the past three months AND has a Kerry yard sign) that she was marked a 0. She's been a solid 1 from their first phone call. Is her record in the database? Do they even have a damn database? This level of disorganization is really frightening if we're counting on them to deliver votes.
Second, without exit polling being conducted this year by the networks, we're going to need to have very good voter lists, and volunteers poll watching who know what they're doing. This doesn't really apply to Oregon, because it's all vote by mail, but if there's this degree of disorganization in Oregon, it could exist elsewhere. Do they or do they not have valid lists?
Third, it's the Dean Iowa "Perfect Storm" all over again. You don't get people to vote by pissing them off at your campaign. If they don't have anything better for their volunteers to do than to harrass already identified people, get them busy making phone calls to other states.
If anybody out there has any sway with the ACT organization in Oregon, please take this seriously. It's a real problem. I'd also like to hear about any other battleground states where this might be going on.
Update [2004-10-18 17:4:42 by mcjoan]: Just to be clear, I am not advocating that anyone stop phone-banking or canvassing and working for GOTV. I just want to find out about the scope of the issue in areas other than Oregon.
[Update II] This looks like it has the potential to degenerate into a SYFPH discussion. I'll delete it if that happens. I am not denigrating the efforts of ACT. I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from volunteering. I'm not going to not vote because of this. I wanted to know if there are larger GOTV organization issues out there in other battleground states.