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Test Case: I Volunteered For A Presidential Campaign. Did It Help Me Feel More Engaged In the Election?

It was time to get involved past the mailing of my absentee ballot.

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Allison Peryea presidential campaignSo, there’s this presidential election coming up. It’s a pretty historic one: We are choosing between the first woman president and the first documented woman-hating president. I’ve always been a diligent voter, but—other than purchasing a bedazzled “Obama” lapel pin in 2008—I’ve never really flaunted my support for a particular candidate. It might be because I grew up in Eastern Washington, where we store our outed liberals in secret bunkers wallpapered with Michael Dukakis bumper stickers.

But this campaign has been a particularly fascinating one, what with the apocalyptic predictions from both sides of the aisle. It was time to get involved past the mailing of my absentee ballot.

I get that some people haven’t really embraced Hillary yet, in part because she doesn’t seem like the hugging type. But I want to be governed, not mothered. I also get that she may not be spit-shiny perfect: You don’t spend decades wrestling with the pigs without getting some mud on your shoes. But though I had voted for her twice already, I too still didn’t consider myself a crusader for Clinton. Would volunteering help change that?

Figuring out how to actually donate time involved navigating a very slick but impersonal (classic Hillary, am I right?) campaign website. It was hard to figure out how to actually get myself scheduled for an in-person volunteering event. You could sign up on the spot to make phone calls from home, but the thought of cold-calling strangers from my messy apartment sounded… undesirable.

Eventually I found the local events page, and signing up online for an upcoming phone bank at the Democratic Party headquarters in Seattle was a breeze. As a lawyer, I am pretty used to calling people who don’t want to talk to me. So this seemed like a decent way to get involved.

My shift was during dinnertime on a Sunday night, just after a Seahawks win. I was hopeful that the victory would keep people I called from being too annoyed—though I feared Russell Wilson’s knee sprain might overshadow the team’s success.

I showed up at an unassuming, one-story building in a residential neighborhood. Inside, the walls were plastered with campaign posters. The phone-bank room had the spare but cluttered look of a college-newspaper office: Clearly a lot of people spent a lot of time there, but nobody had the energy or a spare moment to pretty the place up. There was a snack table. There was a floor-to-ceiling calendar of events on the wall made out of construction paper and masking tape. There were friendly, appreciative-seeming young people greeting me.

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I was given a Chromebook with a tiny keyboard to use (it would have worked well for Donald), and offered a “burner” flip phone to make calls. I received a three-minute orientation from a busy but earnest staffer named Charles, who was probably in his 20s. I would be calling numbers from a voter-registration list of Washington residents who were already believed to be Democratic supporters. The goal was to reach out to the “grey area” people and verify their support so campaigners could send out a reminder to send in ballots. I was supposed to simply ask if people planned on voting for Hillary, Senator Patty Murray, or Governor Inslee—and invite them to volunteer if they seemed potentially interested.

Another part of the phone bank’s role was to identify wrong and disconnected numbers. The whole process seemed a bit inefficient—these numbers were probably ancient, as most people probably registered to vote long ago—but that’s government for you I guess. (I’m no campaign strategist, but I feel like a better way to get people to vote in our state, where all voting is by mail, is to give out stamps. The only time you have stamps on hand is when you don’t need them.)

I was signed into a computer program that provided me with the name, age, gender and phone number of a voter. There were dropdown boxes to let you mark, for example, whether they didn’t answer the call, or whether they refused to share information.

I dove right in, and reached a couple of people eager to share their plans to vote Democrat down the ticket. Then I waded into a sea of voicemail boxes and disconnected numbers. A lot of the people I was supposed to call were older: The more senior people were more likely to answer their phones, and also less likely to be able to understand the nature of my call. I did get a kick out of every elderly lady who said she was going to vote for Hillary.

More people were undecided about who they were voting for in the state races. One person picked up the phone and started yelling “Whooooooo? Whooooooo? Whooooooo?” into their phone. (Startled, I hung up and checked the “Not Home” box.) Two people said they wouldn’t provide their political preferences to a stranger on the phone, which seemed fair to me. They weren’t super-mean about it, but it still caused me to feel the sting of rejection and the shame of having irritated someone.

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You could see that all the volunteers had moments of validation and discouragement. You could hear the relief in their voices when people confirmed their wholehearted intention to vote for Hillary. You could feel the disbelief when callers hung up mid-pitch. One college-age guy who eventually showed up struggled mightily, lacking the quick, confident spiel required to get someone to stay on the line and divulge relatively personal information.

I listened to the staffers make calls to people who had expressed an interest in volunteering. They used big voices and casual, friendly language. Experts in positive peer pressure. I wondered how they could endure the constant rejection from both those who are outright hostile and those who simply expressed an interest in participation to put off having to make a direct denial. A lot of people on the phone claimed to be too busy to get involved, with school or health issues or life in general getting in the way. “Maybe next time” was the mantra. It was also somewhat surreal to see all of these people spending their Sunday night in a windowless building all to promote the political career of a person that most of us have only seen on TV. It was like religion: Believing without directly seeing for yourself.

Nearing the end of my volunteering time, I had fingers crossed that people wouldn’t pick up. Cold-calling people was exhausting. I had a new respect—and sympathy—for telemarketers. It was buoying, however, to get that “my family always votes Democrat” response. It felt like we were all in something together.

The next night was the first presidential debate. I did feel more like a card-carrying member of Team Hillary than before. Her masterful performance had me laughing out loud—partially with relief—and I stayed up late into the night reading debate recaps and analyses. In two days, I had turned into one of those politics-obsessed people who I try to avoid. All I wanted to do was bask in the memory of the debate (though I realize full well the event almost certainly caused no Trump-supporter epiphanies, and also likely had no effect on the Bernie diehards, whose naiveté causes me physical pain).

I know everybody’s busy and that reaching out to strangers can be terrifying, but I did feel a greater connection with the political process by volunteering, even if only for a couple of hours. It took more effort than simply sharing some Trump-bashing meme on Facebook, for sure. But it also made me briefly feel like a part of a grassroots effort to try to make our country a better place, headed by a bunch of kids with a box of old cell phones and a table of donated snacks. Perhaps if we want to see a woman in the White House, we should follow their lead and do what we can to help put her there.

Allison Peryea is a shareholder attorney at Leahy Fjelstad Peryea, a boutique law firm in downtown Seattle that primarily serves community association clients. Her practice focuses on covenant enforcement and dispute resolution. She is a longtime humor writer with a background in journalism and cat ownership. You can reach her by email at Allison.Peryea@leahyps.com.

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