My Florida Text Banking shift: well, that was depressing

[mcar]

I do regular text banking in FL for Team Biden. Until today, we were focusing on vote by mail ballots, encouraging people to return them ASAP. The response was wonderful.

Today, we shifted to encouraging early voting, makes sense since it started today here. However, the text bank was open to all voters.

The whole thing is automated, with scripts to respond to the textees responses.

I did 600 texts. Fully 90% of them ranged from "hell, no, I'm voting for Trump" to "Fck you, socialist. Biden is a pedophile and Harris is a ho."

I responded with the standard responses, one of which is "Sorry, I'm just a volunteer." That elicited one, "sorry, I shouldn't have responded like that," but several others "fck you socialist" and worse.

The other texters, from all over the country, were getting similar replies. I stopped after an hour. I didn't need another hour of that abuse. The contact person expressed sympathy but added that some Rs are voting for Biden. I didn't see that at all.

I'll be back at it again tomorrow and hope for a better response.

[LisaL]

1. Why do they have you encourage Republicans to do early voting?

NT

[cwydro]

13. Good question.

[mcar]

33. I asked that

The answer was that some Republicans are voting Biden.

[Drunken Irishman]

2. Don't they normally utilize phone #s of potential Biden voters - not just random voters?

Pretty brutal if these numbers are thought to be Biden supporters.

[LisaL]

5. Even if those are just random numbers, 90% of them shouldn't be Trump voters.

NT

[mcar]

34. When we do this locally, we use VAN, which directs us to

Democrats and NPA voters.

The numbers were not thought to be Biden supporters. It was opened up to all voters in FL.

[chowder66]

3. That would depress anyone having that kind of vitriol thrown their way.

[mcar]

35. The scary thing was the uniformity of it

Biden's a pedophile, Harris is a (won't say it). He'll raise my taxes, tank the economy, blah, blah.

It's like they were the ones on a script.

[chowder66]

56. That's creepy. Everything regarding Trump is creepy.

I hope you don't have to go through that again.

[PTWB]

4. Why are you encouraging Republicans to vote at all?

[mcar]

36. The theory, from what I was told when I complained,

is that there are Biden voters among Republicans. Guess they are trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

[vercetti2021]

6. That's a reason I didn't phone bank

Because knowing me I would have said something like you guys are fucking Beyond worth Redemption

[mcar]

37. It's why I don't phone bank either

Texting, until tonight, has been much nicer.

[marybourg]

7. Your team should be calling only Dems.

Nobody can withstand that kind of abuse.

[LisaL]

8. And for what purpose are they encouraging Republicans to do early voting?

NT

[marybourg]

10. Seems ridiculous. And it also seems like

they’ve been given a R list altogether.

[LisaL]

11. Exactly.

Just random texting shouldn't yield 90 % of Trump voters, unless the polls are completely wrong.

[marybourg]

12. Agree.

[riversedge]

53. I see pics of trumps airport rallies and have to wonder about the polls also.

[Renew Deal]

25. In theory, they should have identified friendlies long ago.

So they should GOTV likely friendlies.

[marybourg]

28. Yup. This sounds very strange to me.

[Renew Deal]

29. I'm not assuming the worst

It could be a form of polling to see if there is any movement with republicans.

[mcar]

38. Dems and NPAs - that's what I said

Many, many of us texters were complaining. I asked why they weren't using the state voter registration system and filtering out Republicans and they said that some Republicans are voting for Biden.

I'd much rather us focus on the easily gettables than waste my time with these losers.

[Native]

58. No way I can handle calling these people if they're targeting the same group with phone banking

Thanks for the heads up. I'm definitely going to call our field organizer and find out if I'm going to have to be speaking with these people directly. I might have to rethink this.

[mcar]

59. If this keeps up, I'll go to some of the other text banking options

a good DUer listed in this thread.

I hope they aren't opening up phone banking to all voters.

[marybourg]

60. Bad decision on their part. If team gets demoralized that

could end it.

[mcar]

62. Yes, exactly!

[Ananda62]

9. That's discouraging

I am a registered Democrat and already voted. For some reason I keep getting calls and texts from various Democratic organizations urging me to vote. I always respond that I early voted for Biden already. (I’m in NV.)

I hope you have more positive responses tomorrow.

[mcar]

41. Thanks. I'm hoping they'll adjust the system.

[Laelth]

14. Thank you for fighting the good fight.

Sorry you had a rough day. Better luck tomorrow.



-Laelth

[UpInArms]

15. I am so sorry

you had a bad shift ...

Just having one of those vile people in my face (on my screen) would piss me off

[Music Man]

16. How many texts did you actually get back?

I'm just curious to know 90% of what?

[mcar]

42. That's a good question

I didn't count. It's done in blocks of 300 texts. I probably had 30 or so replies so 10-15%. Maybe more.

[mucifer]

17. 90% of all voters were like that? Wow. I'm so sorry.

[mcar]

43. 90% of the replies

Which were maybe 1/3 of those I texted.

[mucifer]

47. Ohhhh that makes me feel better. So dems might have ignored the text THANKS!

I really appreciate you doing that hard work Abuse is horrible

[mcar]

52. I ignore these kinds of texts all the time

I get several a day. So, yeah, maybe we just brought out the worst of the lot.

[mucifer]

54. I text a "thank you for volunteering but Unsubscribe" and the texts stop Until I donate

again and get another text and reply the same way.

[mcar]

55. That's a good reply

I got several of those until tonight.

[Baitball Blogger]

18. Sounds like they gave you the prospect list, and not the hot list.

[MaryMagdaline]

19. I assume that you did not get 540 texts back?

Do you mean 90 per cent of the people who responded were negative? If so how many responded?

I know from phone banking in Florida that they give us independents as well as democrats so many of the independents are Trumpsters.

[Demsrule86]

22. We don't get independents and those we text can't text us back. They text to a number which is the

campaign.

[MaryMagdaline]

23. Uggh.

[mcar]

44. No, sorry, I wasn't specific

Not all those texted reply. Most don't. It was maybe 30% or so.

[marmar]

20. What part of Florida?

The northern half might as well be Alabama.

[mcar]

45. All of Florida.

We have people text banking from all over the country. I just happen to live in Florida as well. But the contact list covers the state.

Happy to think that this batch was from Floribama.

[Demsrule86]

21. I do texting in Ohio. We send texts to Democrats only.

? why would you even have a list of GOP.

[mcar]

46. This is what I asked

This is a Team Biden effort. I don't get it.

[rzemanfl]

24. Sounds to me like posting a phone number asking for obscene phone calls.

Please correct me if I am wrong about this. It sounds to me like any asshole can text that number,

[UCmeNdc]

26. I do not understand

Why would a democratic get the vote out effort encourage GOP voters to vote? Shouldn't you have a list of known Democratic voters only?

[mcar]

48. Yep.

[brush]

27. Poor organization. Phone banking/text banking should target...

known Dems to get their vote out. Also to encourage them to get family and friends to vote, and see if they want to work on the campaign also.

Using a list that includes republicans is a waste of time and a morale wrecker. Who the hell is the organizer there?

[mcar]

49. That's what we were doing with the mail in ballots

And it was lovely.

It shifted today to all voters. I really don't know why. But the response on the chat was not good. I hope they adjust.

[lostnfound]

30. Instead of "I'm a volunteer", maybe try "I'm sorry I thought you were an American"

LOL

[Awsi Dooger]

31. Republicans for Biden is the most overrated theme of this cycle

The anecdotes mean nothing. I emphasize that every cycle. Names change but nothing else. You can merely assign the typical percentage and ignore the noise and the hype.

That poll here the other day was extremely representative of my 24 years in Las Vegas. The most dependable method to easily defeat expectation is to understand and embrace normalcy while everyone else is scrambling to pretend abnormal. That's why I said 8% Republicans to Biden in a sample that ranged from 20% to 2%, at least among the early replies. I didn't go back to check later.

Biden needs independent swing voters. The entire election rests on their shoulders. That's where Lincoln Project and others should have been focusing. I mentioned that several times. The good news is that independents soured on Trump early in 2017 and have generally remained roughly +8-12 toward our side since that point.

[diva77]

32. Please join a different text banking operation if you can. Here are some links:

https://grassrootsdems.org/volunteer/

https://swingleft.org/

https://democrats.org/text-out-the-vote/

Thanks for your effort --

[mcar]

50. Thanks for this

This is a Team Biden operation. If it doesn't improve over the next shift, I'll check these links out.

[a kennedy]

39. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for all the devoted work and for the crap you've

had to deal with. You are an election hero. Thank you so much.

[mcar]

51. Aw, shucks, a kennedy

I appreciate the kind words.

[shrike3]

57. Cook has Florida in the toss-up column at the moment.

So in some respects it's not surprising you'd run into Trumpees in a text bank that targeted all voters.

[Trenzalore]

61. I honestly have had it with the text messages

I appreciate the volunteers doing their part to get out the vote but I get between 4-5 election related text messages a day from various sources....Got my first Trump campaign one over the weekend.

I'm just sick of getting them.

[brooklynite]

63. I would think the campaign would have clean voter lists by now.

[mcar]

64. The state and county Dems certainly do

This was deliberate, according to what the chat people told me. They wanted to reach out to republicans. Given the feedback from all of us (and there were a lot of us), I'm hoping it won't be the same tomorrow. If it is, I'll text with another Democratic group.

This was nonsense.

[JCMach1]

65. Sound like you had an R list