Kevin cautioned that volunteers must be prioritized to maximize their effectiveness and minimize frustrations (e.g., canvassing the River Oaks section of Houston....;-)
I'd say to go with the best tools we can muster, adding logic that reflects Kevin's experience - prioritizing voting districts, etc.
But we will benefit from the enthusiasm our smart mob is accumulating. It's likely that we'll have more volunteers than most campaigns, plus the online tools to make the mechanics of their job easier.
If that proves true, we can afford to waste some "cycles" since we'd have some to "waste." In my experience, one must use a volunteer or risk losing them.
__________________________________________
On Monday, July 28, 2003, at 07:13 PM, Kevin Thurman wrote:
From: Kevin Thurman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon Jul 28, 2003 7:13:24 PM America/New_York
To: Britt Blaser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], Hack4Dean List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Josh Koenig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Zack Rosen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [hackers] DevLog Comment
Anyone follow up on this yet? Have any comments on my suggestions?
Kevin
Britt
We are actually dealing with two political problems and we need to parse them out and deal with them separately. Location of volunteers and Precinct Capts and canvassers.
The first is simple and I could help write a script that allows people to identify where other volunteers are located and even the national office to be able to locate say number of volunteers within a certain radius and send out e-mails to each one. Geocoder (which is free) can easily be formatted to add a geocode (lat and long) to any volunteer with an address and allow for people to say e-mail everyone within 100 miles about a rally with Gov. Dean. Once the geocoding is done laying that over a map is more than simple even with the resources that we have.
The second is more complicated because you are not just trying to solve a technical problem, it is a political problem wrapped within a technical one. Canvassing needs to be done in certain areas more than others, certain state more than others, etc. This is because people are registered or supporting Dean in some way or unregistered Demcorats or worse Repblicans are concentrated in certain areas. Now the system is more complex because it can't simply assign people to the area they want to walk then people will be walking San Francisco and never walk Oakland, trust me years of political experience make this a hard an fast reality.
Therefore the "blocks" or precincts have to prioritized and suggested to the user (they should have the option to overirde they are volunteers)an area to canvass. Then point to the resources to use in canvassing. That means the following data would need to be entered. Therefore this system needs three things to fly:
1) census data (which can be gotten for free)
2) Voter lists (wherever possible - often costs money) Registration numbers (free) where not.
3) Then there needs to be a decent amount of code that needs to be compiled to make it all work.
I believe it can be a simple five step process for the user: 1) enter your address 2) Pick a precinct 3) Print out materials 4) Canvass 5)enter in results
This will mean a maximized use of volunteers and universally available data.
One could argue that people waling "bad blocks" won't hurt ... however there are two problems related to that: First, the volunteers will get frustrated and quit quicker, and second the volunteers could be using their precious volunteer time doing other things that are more likely to get dean elected.
I think that both one and two are possible. The first is easy and should be worked on as soon as possible. The second, I believe, should be a coordinated decision, the Dean campaign shouldn't have to re-invent the wheel in four months. However, this must be done, and it must be as powerful as described above because: Primaries are about turnouts more than anything else because so few people vote in them and second the GOP has their own similar system, but would end up being a generation behind ours because it is a top down tool used for analysis. This system would be a tool of action and analysis.
Kevin Thurman [EMAIL PROTECTED] 909.793.6902
On Tuesday, July 15, 2003, at 09:54 AM, Britt Blaser wrote:
On Monday, July 14, 2003, at 04:08 AM, Neil Drumm wrote:
MAP NEEDED for organizing canvassers, votr reg, etc__________________________________________
a map of state/county/city that local users could draw boundaries on the map - as desired (say with the mouse?) - like say, an area 4 blocks by 2 blocks, draw a box around it, and then type "Bill Smith" in the box, to show where he would go door to door to canvass.
The Census Dept. delivers a LOT of info based on an address from this URL:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ AGSGeoAddressServlet?_lang=en&_programYear=50&_treeId=420
I've posted a report on how the census service works at:
http://blaserco.com/Dean/census.html
I've suggested one way to help canvassers. I hope we can improve on that concept.
Britt __________________________________________ On Monday, July 14, 2003, at 04:08 AM, Neil Drumm wrote:
I was updating my DevLog and realized that I had a comment that I didn't know what to do with. I pasted a copy below and CCed this message to the author. This looks like something that there must be an existing software product that would work, but I wouldn't know what.
As a side note I think I should remind the new developers that they are encouraged to keep a DevLog on AmericansForDean.com. If you think you would use a DevLog have Josh set it up for you.
-Neil
Origional Comment:
i am 60 yr Dean supporter/organizer, one of core group of about ten in LR< AR.
writer/editor if need be - use computer to email, word process - dont know a lot of technical stuff, but am reading your website.
here is something i think we might need in coming months:
MAP NEEDED for organizing canvassers, votr reg, etc
a map of state/county/city that local users could draw boundaries on the map - as desired (say with the mouse?) - like say, an area 4 blocks by 2 blocks, draw a box around it, and then type "Bill Smith" in the box, to show where he would go door to door to canvass.
if other deanites could see visually, it might help energize the organizers, and explain to newcomers, etc.
also would like to see network capability that i could contact dean leaders in other small Ark towns - and they me - since we have access to resources that smaller communities do not
-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] aim: ndrumm3 http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~ndrumm
