| So what's an "uninformed voter," anyways? I keep hearing about them in the debate over whether or not we should move the 2012 Austin municipal election from May to November. The fact is, the same folks arguing against More Uninformed Voters totally love these same voters when their ballots suit other political purposes.
Apparently the November 2012 voters are "too uninformed" to vote on city council elections. This line was written in a letter from consultant Dean Rindy to Council (quoted in The Chronicle, posted as a comment here on BOR, and then basically repeated, well, repeatedly from the dais by several of his clients). Dean writes:
"The argument has been made that November will be more 'democratic' because more people will be voting. It would be truer to say that more uninformed people will vote, though this would not be the voters' fault. It would be the fault of combining too many elections with too many candidates at too many levels at the same time. People are not computers with infinite capacity on their hard drives. They can only take so much input. As a practical matter, it will be impossible for voters who follow the Presidential or state campaigns to become adequately informed about city issues during the national election season.
Yes, it's not the fault of the poor, Poor voters. It's not their fault that while our Democratic machine churns them out for November elections to guarantee enough voters for Democratic candidates in Travis County, and enough votes FOR whatever City bond proposition the Council's touting, that they're just not good enough to vote for Council.
It's as if Dean Rindy has never worked on a campaign. Here's an idea: talk to them about your candidate! Here, I will even provide some free political consulting to help all y'all figure out how it can be done.
How to communicate with voters:
- Make direct contact with voters via doors and phones. You may need to scratch your TV budget, though, and invest instead in a much bigger field campaign.
- Send larger quantities of cheaper postcards, rather than glossy 8.5x11 mailers.
- Work hard to win endorsements of groups like the Austin Progressive Coalition, who put yellow doorhangers on doors across Central Austin touting the candidates chosen by both Central Austin Democrats and UDEMs.
- Work even harder to win endorsements of trusted, well-known groups like Sierra Club, who send mail and run Chronicle ads on behalf of their endorsed candidates.
- Recruit volunteers to stand at busy Early Voting and E-Day polling locations, handing out positive literature about the candidate. That was one factor in how Carlos Barrera won his 2008 primary, and one way Mark Strama helped get himself re-elected.
- Facebook ads! They're cheap and you can reach huge volumes of people. The "social" feature will also help tell the friends of your supporters who their friends prefer. They're great. You can target up the wazoo.
- Grassroots organizing! Good old peer-to-peer organization. Have your friends organize their friends to turn out for your candidate.
- Yard signs! Not actually kidding -- signs in influential neighbors' yards can give the perception that "everyone's voting for" one person or another. Are you a paid operative that's ever had a yard sign strategy in a high-turnout election? Was it to help boost name ID for downballot candidates? Or just because you love the smell of coroplast?
The fact is, studies show that younger and minority voters respond more effectively to personal contact than to mail or TV. And that's who would make up the bulk of the increase of November municipal voters. So hey, let's do those things! Plus they're cheaper and employ more Field Organizers than Consultants. Can anyone argue against more and better Field Organizers and less highly-paid, budget-breaking Consultants?
OMG, you guys! I am extremely confident that even if the electorate swells -- and swells disproportionately on the East Side and in renter-heavy Central Austin -- campaigns can still reach these folks and tell them why their candidate is better. The fact is, there are ways to effectively reach and persuade voters whether you have $100,000 or $5,000,000. Anyone who tells you differently gets too high of a commission.
Seriously, the political consultants in this town love Uninformed Voters when it suits their own political purposes. But since a certain segment of the paid operatives think a larger turnout threatens the viability of their City Council clients or future candidates like them, suddenly they're against Uninformed Voters.
If we really want to limit elections to "informed" municipal voters, let's just make each of them define inclusionary zoning when they present their state-required Photo ID. I promise you, Council, between the Legislature's Photo ID law and defining the Baxter Bill, there's no way the Unwashed will qualify to be "good enough" to vote for you!
But in the meantime, Council, you may keep dithering over whether or not you should "let" the voters have an easier or harder time voting for you.
Previously On Burnt Orange Report:
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