Low-tech problems

The problems in the Kerry campaign that James Verini describes in his Salon article are remarkable in their low-tech-ness. According the Verini, the campaign didn't fail because it didn't have the capability to automatically update it's voter targeting database every day, or the webpage was poorly designed, or his online outreach strategy was faulty. No, the biggest problem was uninformed and directionless volunteers. Anyone who has coordinated volunteers for a campaign knows that this is a common problem. However, it's a failure of people, not of technology.

The solution to bad volunteers is better training, more staff, and a good volunteer coordinator who knows who to send door-to-door, who to put on the phone, and who to keep in the back corner stuffing envelopes. Technology will only solve so many problems for campaigns; an experienced and competent staff will take care of far more.

Technology changes fast...But not that fast...

I'm a little baffled by the Frank Watkins piece. It contains a good discussion of targeting, which is quickly becoming far more sophisticated and integral to good campaigning than it was even four years ago. However, most of the other discussion of the Jackson campaign's use of technology is incredibly dated. He hopes soon to create a "HomePage" for his congressional office? They used a database of phone numbers to do phone banking? Good things in 1995, and I assumed that the piece was written shortly after that campaign. But the link to the piece from Emi's homepage says it's from a 2004 publication.

Surely a republication, right? This wasn't really written last year? If it was, our party is in far more trouble than I thought.

Assuming this article is indeed from the dark ages of the mid-90s, the most interesting thing is the speed at which different techonologies have developed. 2004 was the first year that a campaign's targeting scheme varied much from the Jackson campaign's. The kind of thinking Watkins reports going through was quite similar to the strategies I saw used by small campaigns' direct mail campaigns in 2004.

Electronic communications, however, have been revolutionized in the last decade. Faxes? Do people use faxes any more? Watkins discusses the usefulness of bookmarks in an internet browser? Uh, great...but if you asked a modern computer user to name the 50 most useful things about their computer and the internet, I doubt bookmarks would make the list. It's interesting that some elements of campaigns can stay so constant while other change so rapidly.

Cell phone privacy

I thought our discussion in class tonight was interesting on the topic of what information is appropriate to ask of supporters and volunteers. Emi seemed to think that a campaign should ask for more than an email address, but when we got to the Bush site, the consensus seemed to be that it was unreasonble for the campaign to require supporters to enter their house addresses. So what should a campaign ask for?

Personally, I'm perfectly willing to give an email address (that's what my extra Gmail account is for) and my home address--I get a ton of political mail already, what's a little more?

But a phone number? Absolutely not. Like a lot of people in my generation, I only have a cell phone. And I hate--hate!--getting calls from people I don't know on it. I would never enter it on a form on a campaign website. If it was required, I'd enter a fake number.

So, what's the right balance between asking for enough contact information to make it worthwhile, without asking for so much that people begin to give fake (and thus worse than useless) answers?