For years, I used to phone-bank for Democrats during the big election cycles. I haven’t done that this year, because… I don’t know, the pandemic or something. I’m sure the Biden-Harris campaign probably has organizers around and they could give me a call sheet, but honestly… as I get older, I sort of understand more and more that most people know who they’re voting for by September anyway. So by calling them, you are possibly harassing them or annoying them. Still, many voters on the fence genuinely like the attention of people calling them or speaking to them in person. You never know. It turns out, the Duchess of Sussex has cold-called voters. Hm.
The Duchess of Sussex has cold-called people to ask them to vote, Gloria Steinem revealed, claiming she “came home” for the presidential election. The duchess, who as a member of the British royal family could not share her political views publicly, “came home to vote,” Ms. Steinem said.
In an interview with Access Hollywood, Ms. Steinem was asked how Meghan inspired her.
“She has a kind of stereotype over her head that is ‘princess’…The whole idea of ’princess’ is a problem. We [America] had a whole revolution to get rid of royalty. Meg is herself smart, authentic, funny, political. She came home to vote. The first thing we did, and why she came to see me, was that we were sitting at the dining table where I am and we cold-called voters.. Said ‘Hello, I’m Meg’ and ‘Hello, I’m Gloria’ and ‘are you going to vote?’ That was your initiative.”
Wait… did Gloria have a call list or not? Were they just going through the phone book or something? No. I doubt it. If you have Gloria Steinem meeting with the Duchess of Sussex, of course someone gave her a call list. Surely, what they were really doing is cold-calling potential donors to various feminist and political campaigns?? That would be a much better use of everyone’s time, to have Meghan calling Emily’s List donors or Democratic Party megadonors. But of course, if Gloria admitted that, that would be “politics.” Lordy, I hope Meghan is actually doing more than cold-calls to potential voters.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Backgrid.
Meghan is doing whatever she wants to do to help her country. She is a volunteer as a private citizen and none of this applies to the UK anyway. She is in a country that is not in the commonwealth, that she is a citizen of. Meghan doing American election things as an American, which she should have been able to do no matter what country she’s living in. Unless the royal family forced her to revoke her citizenship (and yes, I know they didn’t) I don’t see the big deal. If it bothers them that much, then maybe they need to limit their heirs only marrying UK citizens.
I mean no offense to any Americans on here but I will never understand US elections. I don’t really understand non parliamentary systems of government to begin with but I really don’t get American elections. Their process makes ZERO sense.
American here. I think without the ridiculous Electoral College, our Presidential elections would be a lot more straightforward and would make sense. Our local and state elections are much easier to wrap the mind around (to me, though I’ve grown up here, so maybe I’m just immune to all of the nonsense).
The electoral college is stupid and we need to do away with it, but I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.
American elections and the electoral college make perfect sense when you keep in mind that it was the system that allowed slave holding states to count the Black people who lived there and get the pull from their population numbers but not actually consider them people or allow them to vote for themselves.
I was going to say, the electoral college is actually working exactly how it was designed, unfortunately.
Everyone says phone banking is effective but I just don’t get it. Most people don’t answer a call from a number they don’t recognize. I live in an area with lots of retirees & elderly; they don’t like getting calls from people they don’t know, it frightens them.
Done it twice, now I’m text banking & writing postcards
Yes, I’m text banking too. I feel it’s effective in getting people registered and to the polls.
See, I don’t mind a phone call, I can choose whether or not to answer a number I don’t recognize. But I consider unsolicited political texts to be spam and harassment and it will affect my vote, but not in the way that candidate probably wants.
I am making calls everyday. The goal isn’t to convince voters who to vote for, it’s to make sure they turnout on Election Day. Voters targeted by calls and door knocking are those most at risk of not voting.
I tried phone banking for the Dems in the CA primaries. We called voters of both parties to get them to get out to vote Dem. I am not a prude, but you wouldn’t believe the foul language some of the MAGAts hurled through the phone. I decided to stick to letter writing this time.
Yesterday, Vote.org had a great letter writing “party” to kick of a “Million letters a week” surge. Lin-Manuel and some of the Hamilton cast were on, and there were a couple of songs, and some insightful discussions… Only an hour long, got 20 letters completed, stuffed, and sealed. I try to do 20-40 letters a day, targeted at swing states (doing FL. now).
You can NOT mention specific candidates, rather you urge them to take their power of their vote to the poles and vote. Period.
I actually think encouraging people to get out and vote is one of the most important things to do right now. So many people don’t vote because of “reasons” or because “my vote doesn’t matter” or “lesser of two evils.” There does need to be an emphasis on the idea that your vote DOES matter. It’s one of the reasons R win – they get their people out to vote.
The margin of victory for Trump over Clinton was razor thin (I cant remember the exact number now, but it was less than the city of Baltimore) in WI, PA and MI combined. We need to get our people to the polls.
ETA I’ll add that I don’t know if phone banking is the most effective way to get people out to vote, but I figure people like Gloria Steinem probably know more than I do about that.
Volunteered for my local Democratic Party for years. Phone banking IS effective or it would not be done. You find out about many problems such as language barriers (many people in the USA, especially Florida, have a native language other than Spanish and need help), need a ride to the polls or do not know how to register for “Vote-by-Mail”.
First round of phone banking was to encourage “Vote-by-Mail” and discover if there are problems to voting that may be overcome….i.e. ride to the polls or making sure one knows the location of one’s precinct. The second round of phone banking was to promote Democratic Party endorsed candidates in local non-partisan races. Many local races such as county commission, city commission and school board are non partisan in Florida. Many people have no idea who is running as these local races do not get much TV time.
if anyone is interested, something that does really help is voter protection calls. basically, a couple different nonprofits organize it and you call voters to help them check they are registered, and commit to a plan to vote (tell them where the polling place is, when they can vote early etc). so many more people than you think don’t know where or when they can vote, and don’t have time to check themselves so can be helpful.
That’s a really practical idea, I love it.
Cold calling people to encourage them to vote is different than calling people and talking about who you are voting for. I think the first one is more effective and very important in this election. There’s been a lot of fear mongering and confusion regarding voting in 2020. So good for Meg and Gloria.
I also think that in this particular election, we have a lot of swing voters. So even calling for a particular candidate is more useful than it normally is. Trump didn’t win based solely on the trump cult. Those people will vote for him no matter what. He also got a lot of votes from people who thought having a non-politician would be a good idea, or people who just didn’t like Hilary, or even sexist people who wouldn’t vote for a woman. Those people aren’t committed to him and a lot have come to regret it. So now we just have to convince them that it’s ok not to vote republican in this one election.
@AMM – you are so correct. There are more swing voters out there this year than one would think.
There are more Democrats who didn’t vote in 2016 than there were swing voters. Focusing on the base is what will win.
I have to agree with the post, I just can’t see randomly calling people and encouraging them to vote in general is a good use of anyone’s time. You might call someone who was inclined to vote for Trump! You DON’T want them voting.m
Swing Left and Vote.Org (the ones I’m working with) give us lists of Dem. voters in target states that might not be inclined to get out to vote (for a lot of the reasons stated by posters above). We hope that our letters urging people to get out to vote will help *these* voters who’ve stayed home before, thinking they “don’t matter”.
You would think, esp. with Tangerine Traitor coming out yesterday, saying that “this virus affects “NOBODY (because after all, we ARE “nobodies” to Twitler!), after 200,000 people have DIED, hundreds of thousands infected and having long-haul symptoms that will become “pre-existing conditions” for everyone, after this monster is talking about ending Soc. Sec. in his (GOD FORBID!!) next term (something almost everyone has already paid into all their working lives!)… well, you’d think that’d be enough to galvanize EVERYONE off their butts TO VOTE, whether by mail or in a mask, distanced, in person!
You’d THINK it would…wouldn’t you?
Good for Meghan. I feel her experience in the Royal Family has emboldened her to be even more outspoken and pro-active so I’m here for it. The British might not like it but who cares, she’s black, American and a woman before anything else and there’s nothing they can do or say to stop her now. As I’ve said before, it wouldn’t surprise me that when the one year review ends next year, Harry and Meghan stop using their titles.
I agree Amy Bee and it seems to me that they’ve already stopped using their titles for the most part and are going by Harry & Meghan instead. This one-year review is such a crock of bull and I’m sure it’s not going to go the way the royals thought it would. I’m firmly convinced that they truly believed that the Sussex’s, Harry especially, would not be able to survive outside the royal bubble because they are so desperate to have everyone believe that in that bubble is “The” place to be, “The” place everyone aspires to be and now the whole world has seen that Nope, Harry was perfectly willing to walk away and was able to survive and thrive quite well, thank you out of that bubble.
I hope she continues to do these things. Actually, I’m sure she’s doing many things, we just don’t know about it. She strikes me as someone who is really engaged in the things she believes in. It’s really nice when we learn what she’s doing like Gloria S. revealing this about their time together. The BRF already know they’ve loss control of these two and now their little doggies the BM can only shout and wag their fingers impotently.
I work in politics and I promise you phone banking is effective. It’s second only to door-knocking in increasing turnout and driving support for your candidate. I’ve called more than 5,000 voters this cycle. Contact rates are low (about 1 in 10 people answer), but lists are highly targeted to be left-leaning Independents, left-leaning Republicans, newly registered Dems, or low efficacy Dems who don’t vote consistently. MANY important races (from local all the way up to the Senate) will be decided by a couple of hundred votes. We need to talk to every.single.voter we can.
I can only think about this through the lens I personally experienced it. For some reason during the first Obama run I had been identified as a “swing/unlikely to vote” young person. In reality, I had voted in every major election since turning 18 for democrates but since I went to college out of state I always voted via mail. This was my first election post-graduation though and the first I would do in-person.
I received constant calls from the Democrats/Obama’s team wanting to discuss voting with me and who I would vote for and trying to get me to come to their events. I was always vague in my responses because I truly feel ones vote should be private if they prefer. However, I am also personally a liberal feminist and had no intension of voting for anyone other than Obama.
On Election Day, I walked in the door at the end of my work day to answer a ringing phone. It was Obama’s people wanting to make sure I wouldn’t forget to vote and I should be do it right now! I politely informed them that I had gotten up early and voted that morning and wished them luck — I could tell the caller thought he had won me over with the constant harassment…oh well.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. It seem like something something harrassment when all I got from what you said is the importance of opening your mouth and being clear. Why were you playing coy on the phone rather than just saying “I’m already decided on my vote. Thank you. No need to call again.” Or even “Yes, he’s got my vote, call someone else.”
You were wasting their time being coy, when they could have been calling someone else.
I’m surprised that no one is commenting on Gloria’s anti-monarchy comments?
“She has a kind of stereotype over her head that is ‘princess’…The whole idea of ’princess’ is a problem. We [America] had a whole revolution to get rid of royalty.“
I completely agree with her, but I’m surprised that the BM is not losing their minds and erroneously blaming Meghan for Gloria’s stated opinion? And also misconstruing as a personal attack against Kate by Meghan…. I guess they’re still reeling from the announcement of the Netflix deal. LOL.
Or more likely they don’t wish to pick a fight with Gloria’s base. The BM are cowards, take a gander at who they routinely pick on.
CHEERS to all of you putting the work in!
We need every dang call, text, letter, postcard we can get out along with our presence at protests. Our parents started us out working campaigns as kids as I did with my own kids. Over the years and Democratic campaigns we’ve also had the privilege of meeting many inspiring people. We all miss getting out and working directly with others due to COVID, it was such good fun for such good causes. One of the things I’m particularly proud of my children is their sense of duty to community and country and taking action.
This is what I was hoping she & Harry would do ! Awesome!
Well done to both. This year’s election is the most important! As a brit I feel like trump’s ascension to power empowered other divisive politicians (boris, belrusano, lukasenko…) hence why far right ideology is on the rise. I pray that voters take this election seriously