Campaign 101: GOTV
time to switch from the issues to "get out the vote"
2008-10-16
By Kevin Alexander Gray

In the closing days of the presidential race the candidates’ GOTV (get-out-the-vote) strategy will overtake everything else.  Polls aside, whoever does a better job of getting out his voters will win.  

The GOTV strategy affects what the candidates plan in the backrooms.  The campaign commercials shift focus from issues to action and on the street level it’s about grabbing them door-to-door and, if need be, taking people to the polls.

And there’s the fight against the most common obstacles to making the votes count. There are the psychological obstacles - overcoming apathy and overconfidence.  There are motivational obstacles such as the challenge of  persuading people to stand in a line, maybe in the rain, possibly for hours. Then there are the possible legal and bureaucratic obstacles for individual voters to overcome that vary from state to state, district to district. A successful GOTV effort is getting your voters to stick out the entire process no matter what.

The best way to guarantee high voter turnout is first to make sure people care about the election.   Low turnout favors the incumbent party.  High turnout usually favors the challenger. Obama’s plan is to get as many people to the polls as he can to vote while at the same time demoralizing the GOP’s voters with the inevitability of a defeat.  For McCain it’s a mixed bag of voter suppression and intimidation against Democratic voters and tapping into the “fear of the unknown” within his own party.

GOTV efforts don’t start on November 4th.  Obama’s GOTV started months ago with voter registration, old voter contact and follow-up to make sure  new registrants from the 2004 election and those who just made the October 2008 deadline are all on the rolls. 

Voter registration figures are up across the board- for blacks, women and young people and in rural and urban areas. In the South and North.   Most believe the new registrants are a boon for Democrats.  It’s fair to say the Republicans don’t expect to gain much there. 

Some predict Obama will increase turnout among African-Americans by 10 percent from the 2004 baseline.  More broadly, Democrats would like to see the U.S.’s overall eligible voter participation rate increase by 5-10 percent (or higher).  The United States’ electorate normally votes at 50 percent of eligibility (217.8 million are eligible).  In 2004, 121.5 million people voted. Nonetheless, the Democrats hope that their candidate, economic conditions and George Bush are motivation enough to drive both new (and old) voters to the polls.

As to whether or not the number of new registrants offset the numbers that will be purged or how many of those purged will be automatically reinstated on Election Day is a mystery. 

But as a rule this Election Day, voters should prepare themselves for standing in a line for an hour or more and be prepared to be told they can’t vote because their name was removed from the voting roll.  Voter purging has long been a weapon used to blunt black voter turnout.  Election officials regularly remove voters' names from the rolls as they update and improve their lists.  According to The Brennan Center, between 2004 and 2006, 39 states and the District of Columbia purged some 13 million voters while cleaning up the rolls.

Of course some people have already been to the polls. According to The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Georgia voters have already cast more early ballots than in the 2004 presidential election with 499,582 early ballots cast. Of that number 436,579 voted in person, and 63,003 mail-in ballots were rejected for various reasons.  Of those early voters, 37 percent, or 184,453 were black. Those are potentially controversial numbers in the shadow of a contested race.

McCain is worried about swing state turnout.  In Ohio, a record-breaking 94 percent of eligible citizens have now registered.   According to published reports about 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January. To counter anticipated rises in black participation in such places, McCain running mate Sarah Palin is tasked with mobilizing the white working class and or as some have accused her, “playing the fear card.” 

The other part of McCain’s ground game is good old-fashioned voter suppression and legal challenges.   This is where the attack on the community organizing group ACORN comes into play.  ACORN is McCain’s “Willie Horton” of sorts. The aim of the attack is to suppress the vote by raising questions on the “legitimacy” or “legality” of some of those potential Obama voters registered by the non-profit group.

And just maybe some of those registered by ACORN will be intimated into not coming to the polls for fear their registration will be challenged.   To go along with their attack on ACORN, in Ohio, Republicans have filed a series of legal challenges to new registrations and the administration of election rules. And the courts are siding with Republicans saying state election officials have to develop a way to verify voter registration information. 

Other voter suppression tricks include challenging the residency of college students thus challenging their right to vote close to their campuses.  Or, if a person registered online or sent in an absentee ballot and didn’t include a color copy of their license their vote may be invalid.

Some voting rights advocates suggest that voters take additional legal documents with them to the polls just in case their right to vote is challenged.  And, part of a campaign’s GOTV strategy is making sure there are provisional ballots on site and that a voter just doesn’t walk away or get turned away without expressing their official preference in some way. 
 
 
Election day is a campaign’s biggest challenge.  There will be the usual problems with voting machines breaking down or polling places that mysteriously move or close early.  But in what promises to be a contentious and emotional election down the wire, every vote will matter.
 
The best scenario for Obama is to have a historically high turnout and as large a vote separation between him and McCain as possible.  The best scenario for McCain is if whites vote for him in very, very large measure. 

But then perhaps this year, maybe voters need very little prompting to vote.  Things are bad.  They want change.  And they want it yesterday.