Interning for a political race, especially at the state level away from the glamor of national level campaigns, requires me to be ready to go anywhere or do anything. During the early weeks of my involvement in the campaign, my duties went from moving furniture into our new office to filling in as a manager and spokesperson for a weekend so that we could cover more ground during a weekend that had events across the district. Typically though, my days are not so varied.
When I come in every day, I work on projects all morning and into the early afternoon. This usually involves entering data from the previous day's canvassing so that we have an up to date registry of Southern Illinois voters. This time is also used occasionally to take trips …show more content…
I and the other intern serve as co-Field Officers for our Southern office, which means we decide the who, when, and where of canvassing. While the campaign manager has general places he would like us to be, we decide the specific precincts and streets. So we take a look at where the campaign manager would like us to go, and then compare it to our master list of precincts and local knowledge. As a heavily rural district, we cannot afford to spend time canvassing lightly populated precincts with long distances between houses. When coupled with driving time, a district like that could take three to four hours and we may only hit 30 houses. So I look at areas to make the determination to go or not go. Once we decide an area looks good, we get everything printed out and ready to go for the afternoon's …show more content…
This starts with two or more hours of phone banking each day. So we pick up the phones and dial voters who are either elderly and may not come to the door when we send someone out, or who just live too far out for us to send someone to their house. Not everyone answers the phone and occasionally numbers are disconnected, but even that helps us by allowing us to update the records. I feel this is one of my most taxing duties; not because it is inherently difficult, but because people aren't that nice on the phone once I say I'm with political
When I come in every day, I work on projects all morning and into the early afternoon. This usually involves entering data from the previous day's canvassing so that we have an up to date registry of Southern Illinois voters. This time is also used occasionally to take trips …show more content…
I and the other intern serve as co-Field Officers for our Southern office, which means we decide the who, when, and where of canvassing. While the campaign manager has general places he would like us to be, we decide the specific precincts and streets. So we take a look at where the campaign manager would like us to go, and then compare it to our master list of precincts and local knowledge. As a heavily rural district, we cannot afford to spend time canvassing lightly populated precincts with long distances between houses. When coupled with driving time, a district like that could take three to four hours and we may only hit 30 houses. So I look at areas to make the determination to go or not go. Once we decide an area looks good, we get everything printed out and ready to go for the afternoon's …show more content…
This starts with two or more hours of phone banking each day. So we pick up the phones and dial voters who are either elderly and may not come to the door when we send someone out, or who just live too far out for us to send someone to their house. Not everyone answers the phone and occasionally numbers are disconnected, but even that helps us by allowing us to update the records. I feel this is one of my most taxing duties; not because it is inherently difficult, but because people aren't that nice on the phone once I say I'm with political