Too Much of a Good Thing?
I wanted to post an update of what is going on in New Hampshire, since all eyes seem to be focused on us. I’ve seen e-mails, posts, blogs, etc, about the campaign in New Hampshire that seem to bear little relation to reality, so I wanted to try to provide a counterbalance to those posts.
As a Meetup coordinator in New Hampshire, I've had a lot of people contact me wanting to help in this state. The outpouring of support and offers to help have been truly outstanding and gratifying. However, there has also been some help that has been undesirable, and downright harmful to our efforts here. I’ve said several times that Ron Paul's best asset is his supporters. But they are also his biggest liability. There can truly be "too much of a good thing".
Current Status of the Campaign
I’ve worked a lot with the official campaign. Many of the hired folks are people I worked with on the grassroots level before they got hired. Although many are young, they are smart and extremely motivated. Several of them gave up high paying jobs with no hope of going back in order to get Dr. Paul elected, so their dedication is not to be questioned. It’s a small staff (10) but they have worked extremely well to leverage the energy of all the supporters. They tend to keep very quiet about what they are doing since they don’t want the “competition” to know what they are up to, and therefore they get far less credit than they deserve. Things that have been done, and my perception of them:
As you can see, the campaign is hitting things very hard. They are serious about New Hampshire.
Too Much Help
With as much as the campaign, local supporters, and Operation Live Free or Die folks are doing in the state, it is very easy to get “too much help”. Some examples:
Some folks outside the state have decided to do "auto-calls" on their own. Given the amount of auto-calls the campaign is doing, this is getting on peoples nerves. Also, someone forgot to take the time zone into account, and people were getting calls in the middle of the night!!! You can’t imagine how painful it is for us to hear "I was supporting Ron Paul, but all this calls are pissing me off, and I won't vote for him". This has happened several times, and is really a problem. If you know who this is – STOP IT. In fact, this is hurting so much, I wonder if it is coming from one of our opponents.
Some folks have come into the state, and handed out flyers for marijuana, or 9-11 truth. That's help we DON'T need. No matter what your opinion is on these things, you don't hand this stuff to someone you don’t know well! We almost had a die-hard meetup member drop out because of this. The key to winning people over is to find out THEIR issue, and speak to that. Don't push your issue. If you come out to NH, please keep this in mind.
Many people, including myself, are concerned about vote-count, voter fraud, etc. Many third party organizations are talking a lot about this. But I have talked to the campaign and sincerely believe that the campaign's plans should handle this. Third parties coming into New Hampshire, who are not familiar with what goes on here, could actually hurt us. Please leave this to the New Hampshirites, and the campaign. We've got plans we can't talk about.
Might Help, Hopefully Won't Hurt
Letter Writing: I know there are some campaigns to write letters to NH. I think this is pretty unobtrusive and could help a bit, and shouldn't really hurt. The important thing is to have a good message on the letters. Stay away from anything controversial. Maybe just say that you support Ron Paul, and hope that the folks in NH will consider him. Don't focus in on issues that they may disagree on.
So How Can People Help?
I hope all this information helps. I am so happy that folks from around the country want to help us win New Hampshire!
Read more at RonPaulHQ
As a Meetup coordinator in New Hampshire, I've had a lot of people contact me wanting to help in this state. The outpouring of support and offers to help have been truly outstanding and gratifying. However, there has also been some help that has been undesirable, and downright harmful to our efforts here. I’ve said several times that Ron Paul's best asset is his supporters. But they are also his biggest liability. There can truly be "too much of a good thing".
Current Status of the Campaign
I’ve worked a lot with the official campaign. Many of the hired folks are people I worked with on the grassroots level before they got hired. Although many are young, they are smart and extremely motivated. Several of them gave up high paying jobs with no hope of going back in order to get Dr. Paul elected, so their dedication is not to be questioned. It’s a small staff (10) but they have worked extremely well to leverage the energy of all the supporters. They tend to keep very quiet about what they are doing since they don’t want the “competition” to know what they are up to, and therefore they get far less credit than they deserve. Things that have been done, and my perception of them:
- Direct Mail: The direct mail is easily the best of any Republican's, if not the best of anyone's on both sides of the aisle. They have probably sent out a total of 10-20 direct mail pieces, all of high quality. Many of these pieces were targeted to the recipient. For example, homeschoolers all got a flyer on homeschooling, and Dr. Paul’s protection of their rights. Those that care about sovereignty got a nice flyer on that, etc. The one that went to all Republicans was a beautiful 8-page beautiful piece.
- Radio: I have heard as many or more ads for Dr. Paul on the radio as any other candidate. It’s blasting the airwaves. A day won’t go by where I won’t hear several radio ads on several popular stations.
- Phones: Our phone banks are almost always constantly manned, and we don’t let up. Also, the campaign has done a lot of targeted auto-calls with some great messages. We have tons of coverage over the phones.
- TV: I have to admit, I don't watch much TV. People didn't like the original ad, but the more recent ones are very good. The one that came out today, I thought was great.
- Canvassing: We are getting a lot of people knocking on doors, largely thinks to Operation Live Free or Die. But we can always use more people!
- Visits: Dr. Paul has spent a lot of time out here over the last month. We will never get enough of him, and unfortunately have to share him with Iowa, S.C., Michigan, etc. But he is definitely working hard, and shaking a lot of hands. And the people that meet him love him.
As you can see, the campaign is hitting things very hard. They are serious about New Hampshire.
Too Much Help
With as much as the campaign, local supporters, and Operation Live Free or Die folks are doing in the state, it is very easy to get “too much help”. Some examples:
Some folks outside the state have decided to do "auto-calls" on their own. Given the amount of auto-calls the campaign is doing, this is getting on peoples nerves. Also, someone forgot to take the time zone into account, and people were getting calls in the middle of the night!!! You can’t imagine how painful it is for us to hear "I was supporting Ron Paul, but all this calls are pissing me off, and I won't vote for him". This has happened several times, and is really a problem. If you know who this is – STOP IT. In fact, this is hurting so much, I wonder if it is coming from one of our opponents.
Some folks have come into the state, and handed out flyers for marijuana, or 9-11 truth. That's help we DON'T need. No matter what your opinion is on these things, you don't hand this stuff to someone you don’t know well! We almost had a die-hard meetup member drop out because of this. The key to winning people over is to find out THEIR issue, and speak to that. Don't push your issue. If you come out to NH, please keep this in mind.
Many people, including myself, are concerned about vote-count, voter fraud, etc. Many third party organizations are talking a lot about this. But I have talked to the campaign and sincerely believe that the campaign's plans should handle this. Third parties coming into New Hampshire, who are not familiar with what goes on here, could actually hurt us. Please leave this to the New Hampshirites, and the campaign. We've got plans we can't talk about.
Might Help, Hopefully Won't Hurt
Letter Writing: I know there are some campaigns to write letters to NH. I think this is pretty unobtrusive and could help a bit, and shouldn't really hurt. The important thing is to have a good message on the letters. Stay away from anything controversial. Maybe just say that you support Ron Paul, and hope that the folks in NH will consider him. Don't focus in on issues that they may disagree on.
So How Can People Help?
- Work on your own state. It's looking likely that this will be a brokered convention, and we need to get delegates wherever we can get them. With the hugely successful fundraising, this is going to be a national campaign, and the eggs are no longer in one basket (NH). There are 20+ states that will have caucuses and primaries on Super Tuesday. With the large grassroots we have, we can compete in these if people start working now. A good site for canvassing training and other ideas is www.ronpaulreveres.com
- Come out to NH ASAP as part of www.operationlivefreeordie.com. If you can’t come out, please donate to that effort (using the donate tab on their site).
- Donate to the campaign. The next effort is New Year's Money Bomb The $4.3M, and $6.0M has really gotten people talking in NH, and taking Dr. Paul seriously. Breaking $20M will as well.
- The blimp has also created a lot of buzz. Reporters in NH are dying to ride on it. Make sure it gets to NH by donating at Ron Paul Blimp.
I hope all this information helps. I am so happy that folks from around the country want to help us win New Hampshire!
I beg to differ that you have computerized vote manipulation tactics “handled.”
You wrote:
“I have talked to the campaign and sincerely believe that the campaign’s plans should handle this. ”
First, there really isn’t very much you can do to “handle” it. Eighty-one percent of New Hampshire’s votes are programmed by a privatized sole-source subcontractor called LHS Associates, who also services the voting machines and even does election-day replacement of the machines. You will not be allowed to examine any of the memory cards, like those hacked by Black Box Voting to throw an election in Leon County, Florida (see the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy” for more on this.) Who does program those cards? LHS Associates.
In the film, our organization altered the election results, but the “zero” tape at the beginning of the day read zero, even though we had stuffed the electronic ballot box with minus and plus votes.
But even if the memory cards are not tampered with, there’s another problem. My organization, Black Box Voting, purchased one of the optical scan systems, the Accuvote, which will collect 81% of the votes in New Hampshire. We took it in for a checkup. Inside, we found, is an unprotected chip which becomes plug-and-play with a common programmer’s tool called a chip clip. This allows reprogramming the central “brain” of the machine. Who has access to the chip? LHS Associates.
While it’s true that no candidate, no political party, and no citizen actually has the ability to see what’s going on with 81% of NH votes, it is certainly NOT true that citizens should not become involved in attending after the polls close (legal in NH) and videotaping everything in sight (legal in NH) and also, requesting that poll workers deal out those ballots like a deck of cards allowing the observers to videotape them, which is not illegal in New Hampshire.
You’ll never know what LHS Associates is actually doing, and you also won’t have much control over ballot chain of custody. In Ohio, one of the counties in 2004 was caught with 10,000 extra ballots, “off the books.” The better to make sure any recount matches the announced result.
What citizens CAN do, however, is gather evidence of what goes into the machine so they can compare it with what came out of the machine.
The more citizen involvement, the better. It is never better for the parties to tell citizens “don’t worry, we’ll handle it” when it comes to seeing how our votes were counted.