I spent today attending the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit 2012 at the Philadelphia Convention Center. It was an opportunity for me to meet the head of Democracy for America, Jim Dean. We had lunch together at the Reading Terminal Market. He’s a very impressive guy, but our lunch wasn’t really on the record, so I’m not going to write about it. The Summit is young; this is only the third year they’ve done it, and the first time it’s been held in Philly. If you’ve ever been to a Netroots Nation conference, it’s a little like that, only smaller and focused more on state and local politics. One of the lead organizers of the Summit is another relatively new progressive organization, Keystone Progress. If you live in Pennsylvania and you want to get more involved in progressive politics, you probably want to get connected with the Keystone folks.
One of the panels I attended was about using data tools to mobilize voters. In the eight years since I did this kind of work for ACORN, a lot of research has been done on what does and doesn’t work in increasing turnout. For example, calling someone and asking them to vote has zero effect on the likelihood that they will vote. But if you call them and get them to visualize voting by, say, asking them what time or how they’re going to the polls, they become 4% more likely to vote. Here’s another one. People do not read political mail unless it looks like a real letter. Those expensive glossies are no better than toilet paper. But if you send someone a letter with all their neighbors’ voting records, you can boost turnout by 18%. It works for calls, too. The best way to boost turnout is to tell people that someone is watching and knows whether they vote or not. “I see you voted in the primary. When I call you next year, I hope to be saying thank you for voting in the general.” Also, never tell people turnout is going to be low so their vote will be more important. Tell them that turnout is going to be high but the race is close. People don’t want to do things that no one else is doing. We can actually measure how effective various phone scripts are and develop a set of best practices to maximize effectiveness. Those are the types of things organizers are discussing this weekend at the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit. The list of workshops is here, if you are curious. There are still some workshops tomorrow morning, and a debate between Democratic candidates for State Auditor at noon. The Attorney General debate between Patrick Murphy and Kathleen Kane took place last night. Fmr. Rep. Murphy won the straw poll: Patrick Murphy 56.1% , Kathleen Kane 41.4%. However, knowledgable people I spoke to today predicted that Kane will win because she’s a tough prosecutor, she’s from Lackawanna County, not the Philly Burbs, and because she’s beautiful. Of course, Murphy’s a handsome guy, too, so I don’t know how much the eye-candy factor will matter.
Finally, if you’re in Philly tonight, you can come karaoke for Manan Trivedi at Yakitori Boy at 211 N 11th Street, on the second floor. Trivedi is running for Congress in the 6th District against Rep. Jim Gerlach. It’s a rematch from 2010, but 2012 should be a much better year for us.
