Want people to vote? Talk about the weather
Brad Anderson – Obama’s 2012 Iowa state director
“We had this guy, Randy Lyon, up in Dubuque. Randy Lyon is a retired school teacher. We have 40 days of early voting. And a big part of our strategy was to sign people up to vote early. To do that, they had to fill out a card requesting a ballot. When I would go out and canvass, I would get six or seven cards filled out. During a canvass shift, you’d knock on 45 to 50 doors. Randy, by the end, had 1,500 people sign up early. It was just an enormous effort. Nobody had been able to match that.
On an all-staff conference call, I said, ‘We need to talk to Randy. This guy is amazing.’ I asked Randy, ‘What are you doing that makes you hit all these goals?’ He’s on this call, and he says, ‘Well… like all Iowans, I talk about the weather. I knock on their door, and it is a beautiful day. And I go, I want to encourage you to work early because we all know in November, it can snow. We want to make sure you get that vote in.’ He relates it all to the weather. That’s it. He says, ‘Sometimes I talk policy. But most of the time I tell people if they are Obama supporters, they need to vote early because of the weather.’
We had hundreds of people on this call, and I said, ‘Is everyone hearing this? I expect everyone to use this strategy moving forward.’ After that, we actually had President Obama call him.”
[link:http://cunewscorps.com/3222/showcase/anecdotal-evidence-july-30-want-people-to-vote-talk-about-the-weather/|
