Personal Voices: Canvassing in Florida

In this crazy election year, I found myself in Orlando, Florida – THE swing city in THE swing state – at the end of May. I had spent the past year unemployed, or as I like to put it, being overqualified and underpaid for my life. So in a fit of frustrated spontaneity I moved out of boring blue California, and down to the ever contested state of Florida.

By trade I am a professional organizer, having worked on electoral politics in Washington D.C. for the past few years, and in typical Beltway mentality had little actual field experience. By spending the summer in Florida I was planning on getting an organizing job, and making a real difference in this year's presidential election. A canvass office for a 527 organization had just opened up and though I was looking for an organizing position, I decided that canvassing for $8 an hour would pay the bills until that job came along.

Usually when people hear the word “canvassers” they think of those annoying people who knock on doors and ask for money to “Save the Whales.” This was a little different – we were strategically knocking on doors of low-propensity undecided voters – basically the swing voters. We took surveys, distributed educational materials, and if they seemed interested, we would have a conversation with them to swing them to our side. I really felt like I was making a difference by doing this job and I wouldn’t have canvassed for anything I didn’t feel passionate about.

The canvassing job itself wasn’t so bad once I got used to it. We would be paired up with a partner and dropped off in neighborhoods with maps and palm pilots downloaded with info on who we were talking to. Sure, it was really hot and muggy and no one in Orlando ever kept their dogs on leashes. Once my partner even had someone open the door with a gun casually in his hand while answering the questions.  People rarely opened the doors for me (I blamed it on being brown), and when they did, you never knew if they would chase you out or if they were capable of having a conversation.

But in the end, I had a lot of face time with people I never would have talked to in my life, and the experience of talking to swing voters in a swing city in a swing state of an important election year made it totally worth it. It was kind of a crazy feeling knowing that by having a conversation I could turn this person into an enlightened voter, and turn Florida into a blue state.

What really made it worthwhile, however, wasn't the people that I met behind the doors I canvassed, but the people I met doing the canvassing with me.

There was Don, the 50-something activist, a big guy in a wide straw hat, fresh from working on the Dean campaign, and a hardcore Democrat. He knocked on more doors than anyone, talked to more people and could convince everyone that Bush was a bad, bad man. He called us his troops, and would always give us a ride to the office. He had a crazy addictive laugh, and a magnetic personality that inspired you to keep doing the work.

One of our drivers was Frank, a 40-something high school teacher, also involved in local politics. He had taken the year off of teaching to work on the elections, and was absolutely bitter that Gore didn’t win the elections in 2000. He was so in love with Gore that he named his beagle Tipper.

These two men were amazing in their commitment to the cause, but also in their knowledge of local history. I learned why the houses were cinder blocks, how to spot a Florida thundercloud and when it would rain, why houses shouldn’t be built next to cypress groves, the history of gentrification and sprawl for Orlando, and why trees kept falling over after every storm. More importantly, their commitment to Orlando politics was impressive. “I’m embarrassed by what happened here,“ Frank said in reference to the Florida election fiasco. “We missed it by only 536 votes – I could have found 536 people to talk to!”