As I’ve mentioned, I volunteered on a Democratic congressional campaign in 2018 to help the Democratic Party win a majority in the House. This year I’ve struggled with what I could do to support Biden’s campaign.
Most of what I did in 2018 was door-to-door canvassing and phoning. Canvassing is pretty much out of the question this year, and phoning is tough. With the proliferation of unwanted marketing calls, most people have stopped answering their phones. Over the course of an hour making calls two years ago, I might have reached half a dozen people and had productive conversations with two of them.
Some people are texting instead of phoning, which I think is a great idea, and organizations like Stand Up America enable people to do this. But when I read through that group’s instructions and the descriptions of the smartphone apps I would need to use, I found it fairly daunting. I’m no Luddite, but I didn’t grow up doing most of my communicating by text. I hope there are a lot of young people supporting the Democrats this way.
Then last week a friend in town told me about a local group of volunteers who are sending postcards to registered Democrats in swing states who didn’t vote in 2016 urging them to vote — and vote early — in this year’s election. That sounded like a good strategy to me and seemed right up my alley, so I signed up. I got my first packet of 20 postcards this morning. I’ve already written four of them so I’ll no doubt be going back for another packet in a couple of days.
My local band of activists quickly ran out of names and addresses to whom we could send postcards, but another friend put me onto a group called postcardstovoters.org. I’ve now signed up with them and am happily sending postcards to registered Democrats in Kentucky in support of Amy McGrath’s campaign.