Originally posted on CompleteCampaigns.com and written by Brian Williams
With advances in mobile smart-phone technology being what they are, and the near ubiquity of their adoption, Aristotle’s research and development teams are doing everything they can to render printed walk-sheets a thing of the past. Powered by our national voter-file distribution platform, VoterListsOnline.com, and our cutting-edge voter identification and mobile canvassing suite in VoterIQ, campaigns across the nation are saying good-bye to the old ‘print-and-scan’ walk-lists of yester-year.
But beyond going paperless, many new and exciting advantages come along with the switch. For an example of the power available to political committees today, let’s walk through the day in the life of Julie, a precinct captain in Phoenix, Arizona currently using Aristotle’s mobile politics toolset to reach out to a list of targeted:
(Names, Locations, and Campaigns have all been switched to maintain confidentiality)
Saturday September 22nd, 2012
7:00am Wake-up, Shower, Day-Prep and Breakfast… at her own leisure, no running to the campaign office.
8:30am Receive assigned turf from regional field director with an email notification to her smart-phone. Click on the link and get taken to the Volunteer Dashboard for that turf, a web-based task tracking interface that lets her re-assign turfs, print walk lists, and input responses.
8:45am Conference call with regional field director and other precinct captains to go over the targeted districts for today’s canvas. Juliesplits her turf in to smaller turfs (covering approximately 10 blocks each), assigns them to her 10 canvassers and notifies them of their assignment via email.
9:30am Walks over and meets with her precinct team at the entrance their targeted neighborhood. Julie informs them that the new script is already loaded on their assignment and all they need to do is click the second link on in the notification email to open up their canvassing app, follow the instructions on the screen and begin.
9:45am Julie begins to canvass her assigned list, using the ordering assigned to her by the RFD. Each voter she is able to contact has their voting preference and likelihood logged live into the central database via Julie’s use of the canvassing mobile app.
11:02am Julie gets lost on her way to her 21st house on her list. Uses the integrated “current location” based directions tool to find her way. Reaches the voter and logs in his support for her candidate.
11:33am Reaches a voter who is so enthusiastic about the candidate that she offers to contribute to the campaign as soon as she can. Julie reminds the voter that she has the integrated credit card reader from Square and can accept contributions for the campaign right then and there. Julie collects a $100 for the campaign (one of over 102 different contributions that her and her team will collect that day).
12 noon Julie and her team get lunch at the local fast food shop around the corner. While there, her team compares progress amongst each other. Equipped with her tablet computer, Julie is able to load upher Volunteer Dashboard for the entire turf and pulls up the live performance numbers… Evan and Jacob are in the lead with over 40 new voters contacted.
1:15pm Julie and her team go back out to finish up their assigned turf. The Regional Field Director, who has been tracking their progress from his VoterIQ dashboard interface notifies Julie that her team is well on its way to finishing their assignment before 3pm. Asks if they would like more voters assigned to them for today. Julie accepts on the condition that the campaign cover ‘second-lunch’ for her and the team. The deal is accepted and the RFD automatically assigns them new voters which Julie re-distributes to her team immediately. Outside of count of un-contacted voters increasing on each volunteer’s app, the re-assignment is seamless for them.
3:25pm Julie finishes up her assigned voters, meets the rest of her team at the assigned liaison spot to close out the day. But Julie is unable to find 2 of the buddy teams she last saw at lunch. Pulls up the dashboard and sees that they are still in-process of collecting responses; although they are almost finish (the Dashboard reflects show the live information to those administrators with access). Julie locates them using the native location sharing functionality of the smart phones and calls them in to meet with the group. Thanks them for their hard work and invites them to the campaign office at 5pm for second lunch.
5pm Second lunch; Julie and her team are victorious.
6pm Julie closes out her additional notes with the RFD and the campaign’s field director. They make whatever adjustments to the collected data they have for consistency and close out operations for the day.
