I'm a Failure at Registering Voters!

But I Got to Call Machines from Central Park

Published on July 20, 2004 By blogic In Humor

As I've mentioned several times, I'm not Dubya Bush's biggest supporter. Most years, I make a point of being as politically lazy as possible. Don't get me wrong: i follow politics closely, and I care about what happens; just please don't bother me with all those "requires effort" activities. Any activity that requires effort isn't worth doing.

When I do get involved with politics, I like it to be as unconstructive as possible. I rallied against Gulf Wars I and II, against the IMF (and hey, I even briefly worked at the IMF, and kind of romanced the mail robot), and protested outside the Republican Convention in San Diego, back in 1996. Now, that's my type of political activity. I didn't have to say I was in favor of anything, and I was living in San Diego already, so it was a breeze.

Strangely this year, I'm slightly involved in the political process. This has something to do with my realization that bush is an offense to the rule of law and rights, but is mostly related to the fact that my wife is much more organzed than I am, and most of the non-protest activities seem to involve a lot more planning. I'm also know that if she's pissed at me, she's less likely to join me for couch science fiction watching. I may have no energy for improving the world, but I have plenty of time to sit on my ass and watch the galaxy be transformed into a utopia.

So, the weekend before last, we headed down to Central Park, to register voters. After a nice meandering walk across the hillocks and buttocks of the park, we settled down for a couple of hours of phone banking; calling people who had foolishly given up their names and phone numbers at some point or another. Jennifer and I aren't always the first people at an event, so by the time we got there, all the names lists had been given out, and we were assigned to do call backs. That meant that we called numbers that, on the first run through, had been answered by machines. I don't mean the Matrix, although that would be pretty scary:

Scary Machine: Yes, Mr. Anderson?
Me: Um, would you like to register to vote?
Scary Machine: Mr. Anderson, humans are a disease on the face of the planet.
Me: Is that a no?
Scary Machine: I'll register Reform Party, Mr. Anderson.

But no, we reached answering machines, and we were only calling back an hour or so after the first call. Unlike people doing the first round calls, we left messages when we reached the machines a second time, or tried to register the person if they picked up this time.

The end result was that we didn't register a single person. We barely reached anyone. I left a lot of messages for people to go to MoveOn.Org's web site, to download registration forms; but honestly, who's going to do that? I haven't even registered yet, although that's because I haven't decided under which party I should sign up. In all my calls, I only reached the right person one time, and I was so shocked that I botched my script and she got away. Argh! If the election comes down to one vote, you can know to blame me.

The moral of the story? I strongly prefer calling answering machines than people. I hate rejection! That's not really a moral, but it does sum up my feeling about the day. This was the easiest most enjoyable phonebanking I've ever done, but also the least productive. The only way we could have been less productive would have been if we had called people begging them not to vote:

"Hello, this Adam, would you like to register to vote? Oh, you already are? Then would you like to unregister?"

Comments

apdelong31

on Jul 20, 2004

Are you allowed to pitch the script anyway and try to be friendy to the people?

I suppose that'd be just as bad; if I was on the other end, I wouldn't want to get chummy with the telemarketer.

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