I'll try and crosspost this later today when I get my laptop back. It was doing canvassing work yesterday. I had to write this diary on my Dad's computer, which by the way, is the slowest computer on the planet Earth.
Getting beat - and beat hard - sucks. Plain and simple. However, I told our GOTV leaders, and volunteers yesterday that I'm always an optimist. I guess when you're 20 you can "afford" to be that. But here's the thing: aren't you glad we made these mistakes and found these errors now rather than in 2008? I sure as hell am.
Turnout is very light here in Marion County's precincts. There aren't very many Dean signs around, but fresh Franks signs have popped up along the SR200 corridor and in Silver Springs Shores and Marion Oaks.
Regardless of what happens with Franks and Dean this evening, I can't wait to crack into and analyze local results, turnout, etc...
We've been testing out a new canvassing technique today, and its working surprisingly well. More on that in my postmortem tommorrow (probably afternoon as I'll probably sleep through the morning :) )
One of the big lessons I've learned for the Senate District 3 special election (which occurs on Tuesday), is the need for the Democratic Party, particularly local DECs to push absentee voting as early as humanly possible.
Republicans typically "out request" Democrats by around a 2 to 1 margin (sometimes even 3 to 1 or higher) in the absentee ballot column. At least this is the story in Marion County and most of North and Central Florida. This means that our Democratic candidates go into Election day with a vote deficit, which has to be overcome by both Early Voting (another area where Republicans tend to beat Democrats) and regular Election Day voting at the polls. And we wonder why we lose.
However, this was common knowledge in the Democratic activist community long before this special election - so why hasn't anything really changed? For starters, things have changed a bit in targeted races.
(Support Suzan in any way you can. Money, volunteering, spread the word, etc... - promoted by Ray_Seaman)
For those who didn't already know, over the last few weeks, I worked on the Mark Ravenscraft for State Senate District 3 campaign. The primary election was Tuesday and we lost, getting only 35% of the vote. Why? Several reasons.
Suzan Franks, candidate for State SD3 chatted with FPC members and others for more than an hour this afternoon. We'd like to thank her for her time, which is precious considering the primary is Tuesday. Here is a transcript of that chat. I cleaned up typos and re-ordered some of the comments to make it more readable.
[KQ] Sorry, I'm running a few minutes late. I wanted to thank Suzan for joining us.
[Suzan] Hi Kenneth
[Suzan] I'm so happy to be here
[KQ] The way I figured this would work is that we would open it up to questions from the other chatters, allowing Suzan time to respond before asking another one.
FPC will have two chats today with SD3 candidates. At 4 p.m., we will be chatting with Citrus County Democrat Suzan Franks and at 7 p.m., we'll be talking with Tallahassee Democrat Mark Ravenscraft. To participate, simply go here, choose a screen name (pick one that will let me identify you, so I know who is participating) and hit enter chat. Then all you have to do is type your message in the field at the bottom of the page and hit "Say." That's it. This is a very simple chat interface -- we're using that to make things simple and easy and focused on the content, not the bells and whistles. We'll post a transcript later for those who can't make it.
The primary election is Tuesday and news coverage of this race has been sparse, so particularly if you live in this District, which spans from Tallahassee to the edge of Jacksonville all the way down to Ocala and Citrus County, this may be your best chance to get to know the candidates. Join us.
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One of the big lessons I've learned for the Senate District 3 special election (which occurs on Tuesday), is the need for the Democratic Party, particularly local DECs to push absentee voting as early as humanly possible.
