FM Think Tank

“How can we best create a space on the Future Majority website that is a think tank for youth campaigning - tactics, strategy, policy - that includes candidate or Dem. campaign participation?” ~Mike Connery

Stemming from a number of convergent factors—momentum building off the record youth voting trends of 2004 and 2006; a growth in GOTV youth organizations and projects; the ongoing Iraq War controversy; new and innovative social networking technologies; a half-decent crop of candidates; and the “Bye-Bye Bush” election—the 2008 election cycle is already shaping up to be a watershed in the history of youth politics.

The question arises: how can we who are committed to forwarding this movement help the 2008 Presidential youth campaigns realize their highest potential while also wikifying our “movement memory” for future election cycles and generations of youth? How can we also use this as an opportunity to unify the progressive youth politics movement so that we can leverage our collective political weight to make significant headway on pressing issues that are directly affecting young voters?

A discussion has recently arisen about the possibility of Future Majority serving as a virtual platform for this process to take place. Such a project would entail bringing together campaign youth staff, young voter experts, and young voters themselves to engage in dialogue about tactics and strategy, share stories and lessons from the frontlines, and seek advice from “youth elders” and campaign veterans.

There are many ways this process could be facilitated and structured. This is an idea still fresh in the making, so share your creative vision and help make this happen.

How can we most successfully set this up with the resources and networks currently available? How should FM host this process and what should the format be? What site designs will need to be implemented to make this happen?

Lotz of questions still to be raised and explored!

Update by Mike: I’ve added this to the Big Ideas section of the DIY Wiki. As this post moves off the front page, let’s make sure the discussion keeps going over there.

Why Build a Voter File?

[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_file|Voter Files]] are used to identify potential supporters in your local area, sift out voters more likely to support your opponent, and maximize the effectiveness of Get Out The Vote (GOTV) and awareness raising campaigns.

Building and maintaining and an accurate voter file will increase the effectiveness off your campaign, save you time and energy, and help you identify and build support for future campaigns.

Problems with Voter Files and Campus Activism

College kids are a transitory bunch. We change addresses just about every year, we may be registered in our home state rather than the state in which we attend school, and frequently we don’t have landlines. It makes it hard for local campaigns, state party activists, and even our own campus activists, to efficiently rally us around a cause or turn us out during an election. It also means that the state party’s voter file for young voters is basically useless (that is, if you can even get your hands on it). Clearly, if we’re going to GOTV our peers on campus, we need a new method.

The Solution: FaceBook, Your Campus Registry, Some Elbowgrease

With a FaceBook account, access to your student registry, and some time, you can build your own voter file that will blow away anything the state party can give you. Here’s how you do it:

1. Sign up for FaceBook and join your campus network.
2. Perform an advanced search within your campus network to identify your fellow students and categorize them by their political persuasions (Very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative, apathetic).
3. Copy their name and political viewpoints into Excel.
4. Get a copy of your campus registry - online, if possible. This will contain the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all the students at your university.
5. If you have an electronic version of the registry, dump this into your Excel document, making sure that the first and last names from the registry occupy the same columns as your data from FaceBook (ie all last names from both data sources in column A, all first names in column B) . If you don’t have an electronic version, you’ll have to enter the registry data by hand - a daunting task that will take a lot of man-hours. If this is the case, start by looking up your most hardcore supporters first (those who self identify as “Very Liberal,”) and work your way down the list to less politically intense students.
6. Sort your data by last name (alphabetical).
7. The name/address data from the registry should now match up with the name/political persuasion data from FaceBook. Merge the data as best you can. You can remove Republicans (cut and paste them into a new Excel doc. You never know when this data might come in handy).
8. Prioritize the names. People who are very liberal are your “1’s” in political speak - your most hardcore supporters. Next are those who identify as liberals, followed by moderates, then those who are apathetic.
9. You will most likely be left with a lot of names that have no political correlation. What can I say - not everyone is on the FaceBook. These are you “undetermineds.” Hopefully you will have removed a lot of Republicans from this list (this is why we searched for data on people of all political persuasions. Undetermined students are of a lower priority in your activities than those who self identify as Very Liberal or Liberal (or even Moderate), but they are another pool of potential supporters.

And there you go - an accurate, and easily updated campus voter file. Now it’s time to start reaching out to those potential supporters.