Voter Protection - Well done CO Dems

There is a funny disconnect that happens sometimes for people who volunteer for elections, you can get so focused on getting other people to vote you forget to make sure you cast your own ballot. I solve this issue by signing up for permanent mail-in ballot, which is very common in Colorado, and I love it. It wasn't until I had made a couple rounds of calls to people reminding them to send in their ballots that I realized that mine hadn't come yet.

Fortunately the Colorado Secretary of State has a website where you can check your voter registration status and the status of your ballot. I checked on Friday and saw that  my ballot is marked "undeliverable." I called the Secretary of State and the Douglas County Clerk and Recorder but they had both gone home for the weekend (a little lame, at 6:00pm less than two weeks before the election). Here is the good part.

Saturday morning I got a call (pre-recorded) from the Election Protection Director of the Colorado Democratic Party letting me know that they had also noticed my ballot was marked "undeliverable." The message told me what my options were and where to go for information. Impressive!

It is great to see this kind of organized response, Voter Protection is unfortunately critical in Colorado elections. In 2008 we had issues with County Sheriffs following and intimidating our poll runners, and Mike Coffman (then SOS, now embarrassingly my Congressman in CD6) tried to purge groups of voters from the rolls. I am certainly suspicious when my ballot is "undeliverable" but both of my parents' ballots arrived safely at the exact same address. I am not accusing Jack Arrowsmith and the Douglas County Clerk and Recorder's office of election fraud. But I am glad that the state Democratic party is on top of it.

Election protection is one of many volunteer needs. Get involved with OFA in Colorado, or if you have skills specific to Election Protection, there is a volunteer sign up here.

Voter Access Network on the iPhone

VAN (Voter Access Network) was the center piece of my life for many months. Anyone who has worked in the Field Office for a democratic political campaign has probably used it. It is a powerful tool that enables very detailed and large scale outreach of various types along with very granular targeting. However, many of the processes around the VAN in a Field campaign create extra work. Creating lists, printing them, using those paper lists for voter contact, doing the data entry, and then properly disposing of the lists is one of the most time consuming aspect of Field effort. If this digital solution to that process existed then it might have been able to save me 2-3 hours each day (that is a lot when you are only getting 3-5 hours of sleep per day). It would probably have saved my volunteer team about 10-15 total hours each day as well.

Obama taught an army of followers how to talk to their neighbors, how to tell their stories, and how to take control of the election process. We were able to do this through sheer numbers and brute force, but as tools like this one make it easier to conduct meaningful outreach that is well tracked and targetted I hope we will see even more political engagement at the neighborhood level. I am sure there is a learning curve, but I am hopeful.

http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/its-van-mini