Live Oak Initiative (near San Antonio, Texas)

[James Holland]

Hello,

My name is James Holland, and I am new to this group. I would like to start a topic about efforts to get Approval Voting used in a government election. I think the best way to do this is to focus on relatively small towns that regularly have multiple candidates running for the same office and have formal ballot initiative laws. I live in San Antonio Texas, so I have identified a town named Live Oak which is in the San Antonio metropolitan area as being a good place to start. 

So far, my friend Art Thomas and I have put together a trifold and have purchased plastic doorknob bags. Additionally we have put these trifolds on all doorknobs of houses in two of four voting precincts in the town. We have gotten little to no response from the blockwalking effort by phone, email, or Facebook page, but I'm sure at least some are reading and learning about Approval Voting for the first time. It may however be the case that blockwalking is no more effective than mass mailings. Furthermore, we have set up facebook pages for Approval Voting in Texas and San Antonio and update the pages weekly. We plan to continue the blockwalking in the fall when the temperature cools down a bit, and we are beginning to put together a presentation to give to their city council together or as single councilors. 

Another option we have is the ballot initiative. We have state elections in November and municipal elections in May, so we could start a ballot initiative at these times and gather signatures at polling sites, which we've heard is a highly effective signature gathering strategy. There is one problem which is that we need 5 supporting residents to start a petition in the first place. We now have 0. To get these 5 supporters we need face to face contact with residents. How we do this, we haven't figured out yet. We could switch the blockwalking from dropping literature to knocking on doors like Jehovah's Witnesses, or we could find community events and walk around with contact info clipboards. Also, we may be able to find an event where we can set up an outreach table. Lastly, they have parks and strip malls, perhaps we can walk around these places with clipboards and trifolds. 

That pretty much sums up where we are currently on this initiative.

What are everyone's thoughts on this? Does anyone have any suggestions? How can the Center for Election Science aid this and other similar initiatives? Can any of you help us in this effort by helping to put together a presentation or packet we could distribute to city councilors and other community decision-makers? Can anyone help draft a ballot initiative? The municipal code and Texas Election Code can be found online. Lastly, is there anyone else who is interested in starting a similar initiative in your own town or a municipality near where you live?

[Jameson Quinn]

This is great initiative. Good work.

I think door hangings are not the best use of time. You need to be talking to people face-to-face. Knocking on doors "like Jehovah's witnesses" is one way to do that, but there are probably other places to start first; you want to be as effective as possible, and ideally to pull in more volunteers at this stage. The best is to get people who are ready to talk about politics — at a political meeting/event. Also great is if you can find specific people to target — candidates from old elections, bloggers, and the like. Hanging out in busy public places and approaching lots of people also works a bit; if you have any Mormon friends, they can probably give you tips on how to do this most effectively. Going door-to-door is good, but only after you've built up several volunteers through higher-value contacts.

I look forward to hearing more about this and seeing what other people have to say.

Impressed,

Jameson

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