What it's really like to work on a campaign: mastering the tech

Talking with voters -- persuading them that your candidates are the right ones -- is a very high skill. Nothing less than thousands of real conversations works. Training and practice help.

But nowadays, in any big operation, some amount of computer fluency is also a big part of campaigning.

• Voter databases, ultimately derived from each state's voter rolls, usually enhanced by various criteria including  voting history and political party registration, make it possible to target people who need the extra shove of a human interaction from a canvasser. Maintaining and distributing those databases is the mysterious and wonderful work of campaign "data nerds."

• The canvassers using this data to guide their steps to the voters encounter the information in dedicated data applications on tablets or, in a pinch, on their smart phones. Voter list applications have gotten better and better. Still, canvassers are confronted by an unfamiliar interface of varying clarity. First they need to get into the current app; access is sometimes the initial hurdle depending on app, equipment, and canvasser ingenuity. 

Then they have to understand how they are supposed to mark the various options presented by the scripts which the app presents. Simple questions present themselves: "How am I supposed to mark it if there is nobody home?" "What if the house has been condemned?" "What if she said she'd vote for one of our candidates but hates another?" The possibilities are legion and never entirely resolved. Canvassers learn over time to be more fluent at using the app to convey to the data nerds the valuable information their conversations yield.

• And using the canvassing app is not the only computer skill demanded of contemporary canvassers. We still have to worry about COVID, so canvassers have to sign into a Google form every day and report whether they have any symptoms. We don't want to be pandemic spreaders.

• And team leaders need to stay in touch with their canvassers. Text messages and meeting place announcements fly about all day!

Our folks come in all kinds. Most work in the hotel and restaurant industries that their union UniteHERE/Culinary Workers organizes. Others are ordinary individuals glad to take on a hard job to defeat Republicans. Some are happy, ingenious geeks, taking to the tech delightedly. Some find the technology daunting: they may be highly sophisticated chefs in a banquet hall kitchen or casino, but this computer stuff is new and confusing. 

Everybody learns a lot, the digitally comfortable trying to help their comrades and the digitally anxious living on the internet for the first time. That's what working on a campaign is like.

This campaign still has paid places available. Anyone looking for meaningful work struggling against the Right from now to November should check out this link and apply to join the campaign!