Translation of excerpts from Robert Heinlein’s book, Take Your Government Back - part 25

Chapter 10 How to Win an Election: Conclusion

Finish line

Sending reminders in the last week before the election

During the campaign, your candidate visited the home of more than 3,000 voters, and perhaps even up to 5,000. (Say, fantasy? Not at all: at one time, in one of my campaigns, I visited 8,000 voters). Your agitators visited another 25,000 people, and you, of course, also participated in the electoral round. Say you didn't have time? My dear ladies or sir, you must have time for this! I advise you to allocate for the visits of voters the second half of the day Tuesday and Thursday, from one o'clock to five in the evening. And do not assign any affairs at this time.

Suppose your campaign was not perfect, but still your 20,000 aimed shots were successful - they found those who vote for you. Your marks hit were supported by a massive artillery preparation - mass coverage of voters with advertising and rallies. However, many of your hits took quite some time, and now you need to remind voters that the time has come to vote. To do this, you use reminders sent in the last week before the election. I advise you, either to send out postcards in bulk for a cent thing, or to send personal letters addressed personally to each voter, and not to choose an intermediate option. Because the traditional political advertising, printed on the stencil, addressed to everyone at once, and sent by the third postal class in a plump, uncovered envelope filled with a bunch of leaflets with lengthy text, will be in the dustbin before reading. The postcard will be read, because its text is brief, and there is a chance that it will not be thrown away immediately, but will be saved for several days as a reminder. A personal letter sent by the first postal class will be even more likely to be read and remembered by the voter.

However, your postage even for one postcard will be at least two hundred dollars, not counting the cost of printing the text on them, and (naturally volunteer) labor on filling in the address and putting a signature on them. Postcards should always be signed by someone, although not necessarily on your behalf. Signing and addressing postcards will take many hours, so this work must begin to begin long before the date of mailing. Sending reminders in the last week before the election will be your biggest waste for the entire campaign, and can reach up to a third of the value of all your campaign expenses. Perhaps, based on the time and money resources available to you, you will have to use postcards, rather than personal letters to voters. But in this case, I would advise you, nevertheless, to consider the possibility of sending out personal letters to those of the voters whom the candidate visited personally: they are your favorites.

“Five thousand personal letters?” - you will say - “Why, even a professional typist will spend at least four months printing them!” And this is true. But not everything is so bad: there is a mechanism invented by a man named Gooven, who is able to print many copies of it from the text entered - a piece like a mechanical piano. You can even insert commands into the sample text, meeting which the mechanism pauses, allowing the operator to type in the name, date, personal appeal, and any other additions to the source text without affecting the printing of the rest of the text. The letter printed by this mechanism cannot be distinguished from the type printed by man manually. Printing services using the Hooven mechanism exist in all major cities. If there is no such in your city, you can use their services by mail. This way of printing is more expensive than typographical printing, but much cheaper than the services of a professional typist (“Someday” - he was dreaming - “and our district committee will get this wonderful machine”)

Try to keep the text of the letter short and capacious - for efficiency and cost savings. Here is an example of such a letter:

Letter title

date

Dear Mr Boggles,
I hope you remember my visit to you on April 3 of this year, and our discussion with you about the primary elections. The primary will be next Tuesday. Moving forward to the nomination of the candidate to the Congress from the Democratic Party, I hope that I can count on your vote. I enclose a brief description of my person and my political program.
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Regardless of whether you support me or another candidate, I ask you and your family to go to vote next Tuesday. The right to vote and civic duty for the good of our country is much more important than the ambitions of candidates.

Sincerely you
Jonathan Chestnyaga

In this letter, the name of the voter and the date of the visit to him are the only fields that require stopping the machine gun Gwen so that you can enter specific data. If you use postcards with text printed in a printing house, then you will have to restrict yourself to general formulations, such as “Dear Dempublican” and “recent visit”. But nevertheless, it is better to send such cards to all voters from your list, than to send personal letters, only parts of voters. Just do not be tempted to send reminders to all registered voters in the district: such distribution will not justify your expenses.

It is advisable for your candidate to scroll through the already prepared postcards in order to supply at least some of them with postscripts addressed personally to the voter. These postscripts can be handwritten by the same person who will sign the cards. For example: “PS Hello to your puppy - J.C.”, or “Your son is quite adult, I hope for his voice in the elections of 1960” “By the way, write me your opinion on the proposal we were discussing” and “I hope your husband has already fully recovered. "

Perhaps some of your agitators in their polling station can afford to use the Gwen print service themselves, or be so zealous that they can prepare personal letters by hand — either by hand or on a typewriter. This is a big job, but on the scale of one polling station it is feasible. Or, you can equip your agitators with postcards printed on them with your "trademark" - a portrait of Mr. Chestnyagi, occupying about a third of the postcard, with the address: "Dear Voter", and the main text of your reminder to voters. Use a font that imitates the typewriter typeface and leave space for the agitator's signature.

You may have to ask those of your employees who can afford to drop in postage. If you collect only a few dollars per person, you will collect at least several hundred dollars to the campaign fund. One of the remarkable properties of volunteers is how selflessly they are willing to give all the best, working on a campaign before the very elections. At the same time, hired employees are waiting for everything to be brought on a silver platter, including their salary.

Particular attention should be paid to unregistered voters, who during the campaign were found by Mr. Chestnyag and your agitators, and who can vote for you. After all, you regularly received reports from your employees about the unregistered voters they found, whose names you gave to the registrar of voters, with whom, of course, you maintain friendly relations. These votes are yours if you properly ask their holders to vote. There can be up to several thousand of them, which is enough to turn an annoying defeat into a difficult victory. These are the very votes that Thomas Dewey lacked in the elections of 1944 — the votes of the “sleeping” voters. Pay special attention to the reminders sent to them, and take care of them on election day. You can use more individualized texts in reminders for them than your main reminder text.

The whole pack of sent reminders needs to be sorted into separate constituencies, and sent to the post no later than the afternoon of Friday before the elections (which will be held on Tuesday).

Election Day

The election campaign is almost over, leaving only the final spurt, which requires careful preparation. The ideal way of organizing elections is as follows: every quarter of the city is taken care of by an individual campaign staff, a group of employees is led by the group commander, over whom the unit commander stands. You have a squad of vehicles sent from headquarters to polling stations at the ready, they are skillfully coordinating their actions by telephone, your employees are at the polling stations. In case of rude provocations by the opposition, there is a detachment of physically strong people and groups of lawyers at the ready — for more complicated situations. All this is organized and works as clearly as a team of a warship going into battle.

But such an ideal organization you will not have. And you won't see anything like it anywhere, except for some organizations in big cities on Mississippi, but even there they will not be so perfect. The ideal of your organization, which you will at best, reach by 80% - these are three field officers at each polling station, one at each polling station, one person on the phone, one with a car at the ready, group commanders accessible by phone, if necessary, traveling to the right place of the territory entrusted to them, telephone, a group of your personal assistants, and two lawyers in touch, who immediately go to the place in case of any problems. For coercive pressure, you manage with your group of assistants, hoping that even the most dishonest police officers will not allow lawlessness if they know that a lawyer is watching their actions. Mr. Chestnyag will spend this day driving around the precincts and encouraging field staff.

In order to create such an organization on election day, you will need several times more employees than you have in the agitators club. But to create such an organization for one day is not so difficult, provided that all your squad leaders work actively and energetically. It is impossible to say this about some of them, so correctly set priorities, and, first of all, deal with the following major tasks:

• At the polling stations that your candidate personally went around, take care of every voter he visits, even if you have to call your best volunteers to these plots, leaving their own plots without custody.
  
  
• Try to cover with your guardians those areas where you yourself bypassed the voters.
  
  
• Do not send employees to sites that your employees did not bypass during the campaign, unless you have a clear surplus of employees. In this case, you can send the most inexperienced volunteers to these sites so that they distribute flyers to voters. Do not forget to instruct your agitators how close to the polling station they can hand out flyers, according to local laws, and warn them not to get involved in any disputes.
  
  
• If only one employee works at the polling station, then he or she can do almost as many as three people would have done according to the following schedule: on the evening before the elections and from 8 to 10 am on the day of the election, the employee should ring as many voters as will be able. Those of the voters who need to be brought to the point of voting should be scheduled to meet from 10 to 12 am, collect them at the appointed time, and take them to the polling station as a group. After lunch, the employee goes to the polling station to see who has already voted, having deleted them from their lists. And after that - it's time to get to work with those who have not yet voted, assigning them a meeting time from 4 to 6 o'clock in the evening to take them to vote.
  
  At 6 pm, you need to look at the voter lists, and highlight those who have not yet voted, then take them to the polling station, paying attention to both the actual contacts in their list and the list of inactive voters. As soon as the polling stations are closed, after a quick dinner, it’s time to go to the polling station to observe the vote count, without forgetting to officially inform the chairman of the precinct election commission about this. When the counting of votes is completed, your employee will report the counting results to headquarters, and then you can go to the post-election party. Thus, the employee is busy with work all day, but to spend the whole day this way is not at all difficult for a vigorous healthy person.
  
  
• If there are two employees at the polling station, the work can be distributed among them, having followed, however, that the polling station does not remain unattended for any of them, even after the voting is closed, until the votes are counted.
  
  
• If you have three employees at the polling station, then one of them can take up the selection of votes on the way to the polling station, ensuring the distance required by law to the place of voting. (in most states, the law also allows election observers to campaign, provided that they do not do it directly at a polling station. Thus, supplying information for your assistants with cars about who has not yet voted, at the same time your employee agitates by making from his car, a mobile agitation point, having covered the car with an advertisement of your candidate, and handing out leaflets to passers-by reminding that Jonathan Chestnyag is participating in the elections). If the local authorities, contrary to the laws, do not welcome such an agitation, then the police may find fault with your volunteer.
  
  Therefore, it is better for you to take care of preventing such situations in advance, sending the best lawyer from your staff so that he can talk in advance with the head of the local police, explained to him your intentions, and found out what exactly you are allowed on election day (without shaking rights, but talking to them humanly). If the head of the police prohibits you with what you have the right to and does not back down, hint to him that you should contact the higher police bodies: on this account, the Supreme Court at one time passed a ruling that would reason the local authorities, especially when they see that you know your rights.
  
  The presence of a second employee at the polling station - very desirable - for campaigning of voters on the way to the polling station, because the polling station can usually be approached from two sides.
  
  
• Employees to coordinate your actions on the phone can be found among your supporters, or the wives of your agitators, those who are at home with the children, or are sick, but can work on the phone. They should be provided with voter lists compiled by your agitators, and instructions prepared by you describing how to talk to voters. Here is the appropriate wording for such a dialogue: “Hello, is this Mrs. Duplex? Mrs. Duplex, you are worried about the election headquarters of the candidate for Congress, Jonathan Chestnyagi. Have you voted today? Maybe you need to take to the polling station and back? You can take the child with you, we will watch him for those few minutes while you vote. Is there anyone else in your family who needs to be taken to vote? Well, then we will come for you from 10 to 12 days, is it convenient for you this time? Not? We can drive you from 4 to 6 pm. And how much is more convenient for you? Well, we will pick you up separately, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I will write down. Do not thank, we are happy to help you. "
  
  Note that during these calls, you are not campaigning for voters directly, limiting yourself only to reminding you to vote and offering your assistance in getting to the polling station, however, not forgetting to mention the name of your candidate as often as possible, referring to the name of your electoral headquarters . The person who drives up the voters is limited in his campaign only to advertising on the car, and handing out a leaflet to each delivered voter with a reminder of the elections and your candidate’s participation in them.

The goal of your work on election day is to turn the accumulated potential votes into real votes cast for you, ensuring all your supporters have the opportunity to vote. Often the elections, in the outcome of which you are interested, are held to vote on fairly minor issues, or on candidates for a fairly low position. In such elections, voters can vote in your favor only because your employees did them a favor by delivering them to the polling station. Many voters themselves come to vote only for elections at the level of presidential, gubernatorial, and elections to the Senate. If Mr. Chestnyagi’s supporters deliver such voters to the point of voting, then there is a high probability that the votes of those brought will be given to this particular candidate.

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