Translation of excerpts from Robert Heinlein’s book, Take Your Government Back - part 16

Chapter 7 How to win an election

Parliamentary Elections in Intenswill

“There are twenty people at the door, well washed, you will shake hands with them, and six babies of infants - you stroke them on the head and ask how many months each of them. Be especially attentive to children, dear sir, do not forget that it always makes a huge impression.
“I'll take care of this,” said the venerable Samuel Slamky.
“And, perhaps, dear sir,” added the prudent little man, “perhaps if you could — I’m not saying that this is necessary, but if you could kiss one of them, it would make a huge impression on the crowd.”
“Isn't the effect the same if the proponent or second does?” Asked the honorable Samuel Slamky.
“I'm afraid not,” replied the agent, “if you do it yourself, dear sir, it seems to me that this will make you more popular.”
“Very good,” said the respectable Samuel Slamky meekly, “then it must be done.” That's all.
- Build a procession! - shouted twenty members of the committee.
from the Pickwick Club Death Picks, Charles Dickens, 1837

Learn to wash dishes in the kitchen at the sink

Having read the book to this place, you got acquainted with the theory. To go to practice, you need to do it.
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How to lose the election

You will most likely lose your first election, so for a start we will discuss why the election is lost. To do this, just follow a few rules. First, you need to forget the basic axiom of politics: elections are won with the help of electoral votes, and each vote has an owner — a person who must be persuaded to vote for you, and then persuaded to come to the elections so that his opinion is taken into account officially.

If you do not fulfill only this condition, then you lose the elections simply and ineffectively. But if you take some more action, you can lose the election impressively overwhelmingly. To do this, direct the bulk of your efforts, time, and money to the purely superficial aspects of the election campaign, and ignore direct methods of obtaining electoral votes, such as visiting voters. Accept all invitations to speak, which will be sent to you, even if the place of performance is not in the district in which you are elected. After all, the main thing is that your name should go to the newspapers, the candidate in the elections needs advertising, isn't it?

Appoint a green youth with a freshly baked enthusiasm as the spokesperson for a graduate journalism course at the university. And then - strangle in him this is his only virtue, controlling, and even doing for him all that he is trying to undertake.

Publish a bunch of expensive print campaign, not forgetting to order it in the most expensive printing house in the city. For all this waste paper, be sure to place the photos of your candidate, for each type of agitation - its own non-repeating photo. Fill the rest of the space around the photo with the printed text in small fine print. As for the propagation of campaigning, limit yourself to throwing voters to the porch, because you have too few volunteers to hand the campaign to each voter personally, and voters will read the campaigned on the porch, thus learning about your candidate.

Let a significant share of the campaign fund on radio advertising. Speak once or twice a week on the radio, taking at least fifteen to thirty minutes of airtime, or even more, depending on how much you can pay (radio stations love cash). Also buy out airtime outside the pre-election debate - even if you don’t have the right to talk about politics, but it costs two times less than airtime for political advertising. In addition, in this case, you will be allowed to speak on any topic, unless you are agitating, and this suits you, because your goal is to enlighten the voters, isn't it? And if they know what wonderful ideals you support, they will, of course, remember you on election day, won't they?

Schedule for the very end of the election campaign some Grand Event, such as a mass rally, a ball, or a picnic. And let your volunteers concentrate exclusively on preparing this revel, selling tickets to it, and organizing an entertainment program. Let this event be the culmination of your entire election campaign.

Run directly to the highest positions, such as a congressman, or supreme judge, right off the bat. After all, you are above all these small posts, like the chairman of the local election commission, or a district deputy.

Let your relative manage your election campaign, because this is guaranteed to ensure the loyalty of the campaign manager, and other qualities are not required of him.

By making your statements as neutral as possible, try to win the support of all existing groups of voters, by pleasing both ours and yours. Because at the meeting of the local chamber of commerce and at the charity auction, the public is the same, isn't it? And this means that you can tell them a lot only by smiling, nodding, and agreeing with everyone. After all, the main thing is that you stand up for the good of all mankind. As for your compromising methods, they are inevitable in the fight against competitors using the same methods, because politics is a dirty business, isn't it? (here you slyly wink)

Let each applicant of the post in the government of the winning party know that you support his candidacy, but do not promise anything concrete (it doesn’t matter anyway, you don’t hope to win the election).

Do not check on the ground how the voter opinion of you has improved as a result of agitation, but instead surround yourself with your zealous supporters and listen only to them. Get rid of the pessimists, because they only undermine the morale of your employees.

Planning your election campaign in the manner described above, you will enjoy every minute of it, and have a great time — right up to the announcement of the election results. But even after the announcement of failing results for you, you can make it even worse by turning your failure into real political suicide.

To do this, for a start, you need not to hold a post-election banquet - a party held after the closure of polling stations, at which election headquarters employees congratulate or console each other. You will save on the cost of refreshments without losing any votes, because your employees will learn about the abolition of the party only after the elections. At the same time, it will save you from possible problems when one of your volunteers at the party gets drunk with grief.

The next day after losing the election, disappear for a few days and do not answer the phone calls, otherwise all your supporters will come to cry on your shoulder, mourning defeat. Do they not understand that you are already so nervous over the course of the campaign, and have suffered a crushing defeat? However, you have to thank them for their support - for this, limit yourself to sending out identical, carbonated letters to them. After all, they know that it is impossible to write a personal letter, to everyone personally!

And after that, refuse to support candidates nominated by the party. You just lost the primaries (and this is natural, with your methods, you could not help but lose them). In retaliation - do not support the candidate who has bypassed you. After all, you have the full right to this, because it is surrounded by various odious subjects and shameless politicians who not only ordered their employees to thwart all your advertising, but also practically bought votes. And they dug up some facts from your past and made them public, presenting you in a completely unprofitable, one might even say, slanderous way. Of course, you never forgive them for this, and no one has the right to expect anything else from you. Therefore - move away from everyone - literally, there is always a reason to leave. Well, if someone really needs a vacation now, this is for you, so leave to rest with your family in some kind of wilderness, and do not show up until the main elections are held.

And, of course, from now on, after all you have experienced, you have the right to behave like a frustrated man with bitter experience. Now you stubbornly hold on to the opinion of democracy that this is a good thing, of course, but it just does not work in practice, and in our country a firm imperious hand should rule, or the Best People of the country gathered to create power without fear and reproach. Otherwise, some demagogue leader will destroy our republic. You know this for sure, because you have passed through the millstones of democracy.

I am sure that someday you will definitely get acquainted with the political type described above. This example of a hapless politician may seem exaggerated, but the mistakes I described are found in every election campaign, every year, in every electoral district. Many candidates make the most of these mistakes. I remember one candidate, who was an almost perfect example of the “ideal” described above, in his campaign he made all the mistakes he had cited, except for one thing: to his credit, he was not disappointed in democracy. And he was smart enough to learn from his mistakes: after he refused his party to support the nominated candidates, he returned to the party, admitted his mistakes, set to work, and soon restored his political reputation.

How to win the election

Let me remind you once again that the key to success in politics is to keep in mind that your main asset is electoral votes, and votes are brought by voters who live at polling stations.

It is not necessary to collect votes in the business part of the city or at meetings of the political club - in this way you will not collect much. Of course, units of votes will be found there, however, the main task of the political club is to rally your volunteers, the votes of your colleagues alone are not enough to win the election.

Public meetings are needed, firstly, to unite your supporters, and, secondly, to advertise. However, those who go to the rally, have already decided who they will vote for, and they can already be counted on as your voters, regardless of whether the rally will take place or not. The voices you need to win are hidden on the other side of the closed doors of private houses and apartments, and in order to get them you need to ring the doorbell, another way is not. And when you get a voice in your favor, you also need to ensure that its holder reaches the point of voting, do not rely recklessly on his civic consciousness.

Buying supporters of your political program is not difficult. Those voters that you need are either already on your side, and then you just need to find them, or, if they do not have an opinion yet, being familiar with your program, they can be drawn to your side and convinced to vote for you. It is better not to deal with difficult cases, it's like trying to break a stone wall with your head.

Thus, the essence of agitation is not an advertising campaign with a call to buy your political program, but a search for your customers, and their delivery to a voting point. And this is just - quite a difficult task. No opposition resistance will let you down as much as the laziness of your voters who simply will not come to vote. I once lost the election, having gained only 400 votes. After analyzing the reasons for the defeat, I made a table in which there were a much larger number of voters who were my friends, and who promised to vote for me, but did not appear at the polls. Thus, the main reason for my defeat was the poor organization of election day. By working only forty volunteers, it would be possible to completely change the outcome of the elections in the district! But, unfortunately, this district was considered hopeless, from the point of view of our party’s victory in it - everyone except me and a handful of brave souls. But we turned out to be too small for the full organization of election day.

I have already talked about how Charles Evans prevented Hughes from becoming the president of the United States, a shortfall of only one hundredth of a percent of the votes cast, which could have been recruited if sufficient work had been carried out in one key state. The elections of 1944 in this regard are an even more characteristic example. on them, Mr. Devi got the majority of votes in only 99 districts out of 432. It would seem that Devi himself is a complete failure as a candidate, but let's analyze the reasons for his defeat.

In 1944, 87,000,000 eligible voters lived in America, and only 48,000,000 of them voted in that year’s election. This means that 39,000,000 other voters did not register, or did not vote. Suppose that among those who did not vote, the percentage of supporters of each of the candidates is the same as among those who voted, then Devi lost 18,000,000 votes in his favor, and the preponderance of votes in favor of Roosevelt in the general election was less than 4,000,000 votes. It seems that opponents of the extension of Roosevelt’s term in power were not so strongly opposed to go and vote.

If the Republicans had won in those elections in California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, Mr. Devi would have won the elections. All these states are decisive in the total number of votes, and at the same time, their population is not convinced supporters of one of the parties, they are wavering. None of these states is fully owned by the Democratic Party; of the last ten presidential elections, the Democrats have lost half and more in each of them. In addition, all of these states had been appointed until 1944, or the governor-Republican elected in this year’s election.

The advantage in Roosevelt in these states, taken together, was just over a million votes. However, the number of Republican supporters living in them and not voted was 7,200,000! If the Republicans had concentrated their efforts on these six states (and everyone then understood that the situation there was hesitant, able to lean in one direction or the other), then Devi would have won, even if only everyone Seventh of the sleeping Republican supporters.

Just do not make a conclusion from all this about what party I support myself. I do not mourn the defeat, and do not gloat, and spend an objective analysis of those choices. My conclusion is as follows: the activities of the Republican electoral headquarters in those elections do not withstand any criticism, the top leadership did not control the strategy, and the leadership on the ground did not control tactics.

And now, suppose you want to change a deputy from your constituency, and you have good reasons for this. What opportunities do you have for this? Suppose you live in a fictional “middle” district with 320,000 souls, 200,000 of whom have reached the age from which to vote, and 140,000 of them are registered as voters. Let supporters of both parties are distributed approximately equally in the district, so if the party nominates your candidate for the elections, then you have a chance to win, however, they will not give you the victory on a platter, you will have to fight for it.

Thus, we have 70,000 supporters of your party in the district, of which about 25,000 will take part in the primaries. To ensure victory for the primaries by a majority of votes, you need another 13,000 votes, and a little less - if your state is allowed to nominate several candidates from Party, and in the primaries more than two contenders participate.

What do you need to do to get these 13,000 votes? If the political clubs at your disposal will be able to put up a thousand volunteers who can work correctly with voters (as I described in Chapter 4) and have the opportunity to work on election day, I am ready to bet that you will win the election.

How much is it? As much as you can afford, volunteer election campaigns should not be expensive. If, before your candidate submits an application for nomination, you can raise only $ 1,000 to the fund, you can already not think about who will cover the costs of the election campaign, provided that you yourself will tightly control all the expenses. If, say, the wife of a candidate being nominated by you begins to personally order the printing of leaflets for the means of the election campaign, the money in your fund will run out very soon. The same thing will happen if the committee of your election headquarters interferes with your orders, spending money on unplanned goals from the campaign fund (and not your personal funds). Campaign costs can exceed $ 1,000, but the shortage of funds can easily be covered by fundraising among your team members, and especially from someone who wants to spend campaign funds for unplanned goals in your budget.

However, for most of us, and $ 1000 is a lot of money, where can I get it? The answer lies between two extremes: a thousand people throwing off one dollar, and one person giving a thousand dollars. The first of these two options is preferable: the volunteer campaign will be financed with funds raised among the volunteers themselves and their friends. Suppose that your first meeting on the organization of a future election campaign, gathered twenty people. From each of them you need to collect an average of $ 10, in cash or checks. Someone will give 25 dollars, someone - nothing. Your future candidate is probably sufficiently well-off to invest $ 300 in the campaign fund (just don’t make the candidate’s viability the main criterion for choosing a candidate, a rich person can lose elections just like a poor one). Your political clubs can collect some more money for you. In addition, you may know someone who will give you money as soon as he sees that you are in the mood for a campaign, and have already raised some money for it. But you need to collect this one thousand dollars before the official nomination of a candidate, because you will soon need this amount, and it is much easier to collect it early when you have time for it than when the countdown of the time left before the election has already started.

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Part 1, where there are links to all other parts