Tag Archives: GOTV

Democrats say new ‘sophisticated technological tools’ will help state, local candidates

News release from Tennessee Democratic Party:
NASHVILLE, TN- Tennessee Democrats applauded the Democratic National Committee’s recent announcement of its new data and technology program, “Project Ivy”, which is designed to equip down-ballot candidates at the state and local levels with the sophisticated technological tools that helped propel the Obama campaign to victory.

According to DNC Technological Director Andrew Brown, the new technology will include “access to predictive models, methodologies for survey sampling and sophisticated techniques for testing messaging” through VoteBuilder, the voter database used by Democratic campaigns.

Additional upgrades will include a new virtual phone-bank tool, so that Democratic volunteers from all over the state can seamlessly and effortlessly call volunteers and voters via the web, and a polling place widget, embeddable on campaign websites, to help voters find their polling place, even allowing them to add a reminder to their calendars. And perhaps most importantly, Vertica, the new engine powering the analytics program and modeling, will be made available to state parties and to Democratic campaigns.

Some very prominent victorious Democratic campaigns in 2013, among them Terry McAuliffe’s gubernatorial bid in Virginia and Cory Booker’s for U.S. Senate in New Jersey, were able to use some of the technology now being made available to all Democratic campaigns through Project Ivy. According to Addisu Demissie, who managed Senator Booker’s campaign, “the DNC is helping to revolutionize campaigns again by applying the same tools and principles from the Obama campaign to races of all sizes. We tested some of those tools on the Booker campaign – they worked and we were able to run a smarter, more focused campaign as a result.”

Project Ivy is also bringing new data to the campaign arsenals of down-ballot Democratic candidates as well as new technology. At the Democratic National Committee Winter meeting in late February, it was announced that, for the first time, Democratic candidates will have access, through VoteBuilder, to the data and contact information for Obama campaign volunteers from 2008 and 2012.

Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Roy Herron said of the new project, “We are so excited to start empowering our Democratic candidates, staff, and volunteers all across Tennessee with the cutting-edge data and tools that allowed Democrats to run circles around Mitt Romney in 2012. Our candidates up and down the ballot will now have an even more enormous technological advantage over their Republican opponents, and they will now be able to reach even more voters, more effectively, in less time.”

NAACP Organizes Ministers for GOTV, Citing Photo ID Law

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CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — The NAACP in Chattanooga is helping lead a statewide effort to recruit black ministers to get out the vote.
Joe Rowe, vice president of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County NAACP, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that nearly two-dozen ministers from different denominations already are involved (http://bit.ly/y8JXwF). From now until the presidential election in November, the ministers will organize marches, host voter registration drives and offer transportation to the polls.
The Rev. Jeffrey Wilson, pastor of Chattanooga’s New United Missionary Baptist Church, said, “We want to send out notice to the elected officials and the powers that be. We want to let them know that we are concerned, we vote and we care about what’s going on in this community.”
The NAACP effort was prompted by concerns that a new requirement for voters to show photo identification at the polls could disenfranchise thousands.
Republicans sponsored Tennessee’s voter ID law, saying it would combat voter fraud. But many Democrats say the law will discourage voters who tend to vote for their candidates, such as the poor, minorities and students.
Most forms of state or federally issued identification are acceptable at the polls. The state estimates that about 126,000 registered voters in Tennessee could be affected. About 15,000 people have received government IDs for voting since the law was approved last year. It went into effect in January.
In all, 15 states are expected to have photo ID laws in place by the November elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and NAACP chapters across the nation are involved in the get-out-the-vote effort.
The theme of the campaign is “Still in Crisis,” a reference to the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s.
And the Rev. Kenneth Love, pastor of St. Paul AME Church and executive director of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, said that just as ministers led marches for voting rights in the 1960s, they are leading the fight to maintain those rights in 2012.

GOTV: Repubs Texting, Dems Door-to-door, etc.

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Representatives from the Tennessee Democratic Party and Tennessee Republican Party say they have been preparing volunteers throughout the state to start voter registration drives, reports the Jackson Sun.
Elizabeth Crews, field director of the Tennessee Democratic Party, said Tennessee Democrats will kick off an 11-month voter registration drive beginning Nov. 5.
Crews made her way to Jackson Thursday in a tour to spread awareness about the drive.
“The plan is over the next 11 months to register 200,000 voters,” she said.Efforts will include door-to-door canvassing and event hosting.
Tennessee Republican Party Executive Director Adam Nickas said Republicans throughout the state will launch similar registration efforts in the upcoming year, including a text messaging system that will send participants reminders about voting and registration deadlines.
He said the party hosted statewide leadership sessions and brought a leadership school to Jackson a few months ago to train county party activists in federal contact, social media and practices to get voters registered.