Before this morning, I had no idea how a phone bank worked. Now that I've used one, here's my marginally helpful advice on stopping those annoying phone calls:
- First the most effective preventative: do not register with a political party. They generally only call people from their own party. Georg and I are both registered independant and we've only gotten 1 phone call this election cycle. Of course, in some states this prevents you from voting in a primary. In NC we can choose which primary to vote in each year. So registering independant is the ideal solution for us.
- If you're registered with a party and you're getting inundated with calls, do not hang up on the caller. I'm sure every system is different, but in Maryland one response code covers "hangup," "answering machine" and "phone answered by child." In all cases, you will be called again.
- Definitely do not say you haven't decided who to vote for, if you don't want to be called again.
- In fact the sad news is that, in Maryland at least, there is only one response code that guarantees you will not be called back: "rude." I'm not suggesting that you should be rude. (Especially not if I'm the poor sap who calls you!) I realize even as I make these calls that they are rude by their nature, but as Miss Manners would say, it's not okay to respond to rudeness with rudeness. The trick is to get the caller to punch in "rude" without actually being rude.
As you can probably tell, I was a little ambivalent about spending hours rudely interrupting people's Saturday morning to nag them about voting. I tried to minimize the hassle as much as I could: first, I added "do you have a moment?" to the beginning of my call, where the script wanted me to go right into my questions without giving them a chance to stop me. About 75% of people said no, they didn't have a moment, and so I apologized for taking up their time and ended the call immediately. (Actually a good percentage of people said "no" and then hung up on me before I could apologize and end the call, which bummed me out, but I tried not to take it personally. For all they knew, I was going to ignore them and launch into my script anyway, so I can't really blame them for cutting me off.)
Also I punched in "rude" for everyone who seemed like they didn't want to be called again: people who sounded exasperated, people who said they'd been called before, people who hung up on me, people who said they didn't have time to talk, etc. I probably had the highest percentage of "rudes" of anyone on the phone bank, but at least I got those people off the phone list. At least, I hope I did! It's hard to know for sure, but that's how they told me it worked.
I thought we would be sitting there with a list, calling phone numbers and then crossing them off, but it wasn't like that at all. We just held the phone nonstop, while a computer called people's numbers. Every time it got someone, my phone would beep. Sometimes I would hear the person say "hello" and sometimes I wouldn't. Either way I was supposed to start my script as soon as I heard the beep. It was a little disconcerting at first, but I got used to it pretty quick.
When the call was over we weren't supposed to hang up; that would disconnect the computer and you'd have to log back in again. Instead you pressed star to disconnect, and then the computer would prompt you to type in a number to indicate how the call had gone. The codes were "yes" (is going to vote Democrat), "undecided," "no," "needs ride to poll" (I never got any of these), "needs to know polling location" (I only had one of these), "rude," and "hangup, answering machine, answered by child."
During my lunch break they added codes for "split ticket" and "already voted," but they confusingly added them in the middle and then changed the codes for several existing options. Which led to me punching in "needs ride to poll" for three people for whom I meant to punch "rude"! Whoops! I'm so sorry, you three people who hung up on me. I tried to stop future calls for you, but instead I made things worse.
I wish they would have added a code for "Spanish speaker," so that a Spanish speaking volunteer could call those people back. Although now that I think about it, you have to speak English to become a citizen, right? So maybe it's not worth their time to pursue people who can't have a phone conversation in English, since they probably can't vote. In any case I punched in "rude" on those folks so they wouldn't be bothered again.
Since the computer made all the calls, you literally never put the phone down. Just sit and wait while it dials numbers -- sometimes a few seconds, sometimes a couple of minutes -- and then start talking as soon as it beeps. They gave us stacks of flyers to sort into piles of 25 in between calls. If you had to go to the bathroom, you were supposed to get someone to take over for you while you were gone. After about an hour my ear hurt!
Like I said most people blew me off, but there were a few interesting calls. One lady actually offered to volunteer, which kind of blew my mind. I told her to look up her county Democratic party office in the phone book, and I also punched in "needs to know polling location" for her to make sure someone would call her back. One lady said she wasn't going to vote, and when I asked her why, she said that she sometimes voted, but then she felt guilty if she voted for the wrong person, so it was easier not to vote at all. I couldn't really answer that logic. And don't they always turn out to be the wrong person?
I also talked to a few registered Republicans, who were all very amused and good-natured. In each case we had a good laugh about it, I apologized for taking up their time, and then let them go. Only one guy was truly rude to me: before I had even finished the sentence "Hi, I'm a volunteer with the Maryland Democratic Party," he shouted "I'm not voting, I'm not voting, I'm not voting!" about 5 times and then hung up. Again, that kind of bummed me out but since I have no idea how many times he'd been called, I can't really blame him for being so annoyed.
In the afternoon I went door to door. Which was a little depressing because it showed me concretely how deeply Republican Harford county is. (I had already guessed by the signage, almost all Republican, I had seen on the way in.) I was driving from house to house because the density of Democratic households was so low, it was too far to walk. On the bright side, they sent me out by myself and I listened to my audio book in the car.
I heard the guy in charge of canvassing say that for every household they've identified as a supporter, they want to knock on that door four times before the election. Four times? Is that really effective? Wouldn't it be a better use of resources to broaden the contacts to independants and undecideds, instead of annoying the faithful with repeated visits? Then again, what do I know? I'm not the expert on "get out the vote." Maybe hammering people with visit after visit does encourage them to vote.
3 Comments
might i just say that i think you're PHENOMENAL for doing this, sarah. i can only imagine how hard it must be...
Fascinating stuff, thanks for all the details. Here's how you can be marked down as rude without being rude - very pleasantly yet adamantly take the opposite position. Treat it like a joke, like, "I can't believe you are calling me about this." With this appraoch you can be downright jovial and they will never want to talk to you again. Just always remember that the poor person who has called you is just doing a job and the joke is about the absurdity of the situation and not about the caller personally, and you can pull this off without a hitch.
I can't believe they could spring for the automated call center tech and yet didn't provide the hands-free headphone set.
I like the personal visit x4 standard. The closer the human contact the more likely you will make a connection, and with 4 visits you are much more likely to catch them in at least once. Email < phone < a real person < the candidate themselves. It even works on me - I am *much* more likely to vote for someone if I have met them personally. But a visit even from a representative of the campaign is a very positive message that the candidate cares about you personally (whether true or not).
Sean, the approach you describe is exactly how the Republicans I talked to responded. They could easily have been annoyed or even irate -- how did they even get on my list -- but all three of them reacted like it was the funniest thing they had heard all day. One guy, when I asked "so are you planning to vote on Tuesday?" replied "Yes, but you won't like how I'm voting: I'm a Republican!" The tone was very much laughing with me about it. It totally made me feel like, I want to help this person by getting him off the phone list.
"I can't believe they could spring for the automated call center tech and yet didn't provide the hands-free headphone set."
No shit! What's worse, they are cheap phones which are uncomfortable to grip. After two hours my ear *and* my hand hurt. If I had known, I would have brought my "softy" thing that sticks to the phone so I can rest it on my shoulder without straining my neck.
(On reflection, I remember that the phone system is statewide, and Harford county maybe didn't have to pay anything to use it. They seem to be a fairly low-budget operation. The richer counties that set up the system probably have headsets for their volunteers.)
At least I did remember to bring a bottle of hand sanitizer to clean the phone's mouthpiece at the start of my shift. The other volunteers may think I'm an obsessive compulsive nutjob, but do they have any idea how many germs there are on a public phone? There's no way I'm going to pick up someone's cold virus and then give it to my folks.