Knocking on Doors, Talking Face-to-Face

Phone bank volunteers for FAIR Wisconsin

We had hoped to send in more blog posts from Wisconsin than we’ve been able to, but it turns out we’ve been WAY too busy

Fair Wisconsin is amazingly organized. 600 people per week have been going out and knocking on doors, talking face-to-face with their neighbors about the amendment and how harmful and unnecessary it is. Over 10,000 people have donated to the campaign, and 90% of those have been people within the state of Wisconsin -- so although a handful of us may have traveled here to help out in the final few days, this is genuinely a local, grassroots effort).

On Tuesday, we expect to have 8,000 volunteers working for 13 hours all over the state. It’s going to be a long haul – our “war room” staff has to be at their site at 6 am and we’ll all be working by the time the polls open at 7 am. Volunteers will be going door-to-door all over the state yet again, reminding people to vote. We got some late polling and it’s really neck-and-neck. It could come down to one or two votes per ward in some areas. So you know how people always say every vote really counts? We’re NOT kidding.

As a team captain for canvassers in two Milwaukee wards, I’ll be supervising three shifts of canvassers (and checking on voter turnout and monitoring for any voter intimidation or manipulation, like people telling young voters in the college neighborhoods that they can’t vote for one made-up reason or another). Our third shift is all high school students. Dave, the get-out-the-vote director here in Milwaukee promised pizza parties to students from any high school that turns out 20 or more volunteers, thinking he’d only have to cover four or five parties at most. We’ve got 400 students signed up. Dave is a little panicked about having to fork over the money for that much pizza, but thrilled nonetheless.

For folks in Wisconsin, you can find information on how to find your polling location, how to register to vote at your polling location on election day, and other useful info here. Wisconsin has same-day voter registration, and this is an incredibly tight race, so please check out the information and vote!