Elections are turned on who shows up. A low turnout usually favors the more conservative candidate for a variety of reasons, so it’s up to the left to get people to the polls. For this reason, a Get Out The Vote (GOTV) strategy is an essential part of any Democrat’s campaign.

This is one of those things you never hear about on the teevee nooze. It’s not sexy enough to register among the talking heads, and it rarely makes for good photo-ops. It happens quietly, in the background, with the results of a great effort often attributed to something more banal like personality or a key issue. The art of doing a good GOTV is critical to any election, even though it’s arcane enough to not be noticed. Hard work just isn’t sexy and it doesn’t smell of the power trip everyone assumes is at the heart of politics.

The centerpiece of GOTV is knocking on every door and ringing every phone, contacting people that otherwise might not be touched during the election cycle. The people that you are going after are the ones who need a good reason why they should vote, and that means that someone has to convince them. In person. It’s a lot of hard work , but when it’s done right it produces results.

As time goes on, the telephone part of this strategy is nowhere near as effective as it used to be. People do not answer their home phone, if they even have one. A big hunk of the core constituency you are trying to reach are folks who work long hours and on second shifts, so it’s hard to catch them at home when you ring their doorbell. Sometimes there are language gaps, where a voter’s proficiency in English was just barely enough to become a citizen.

There are many reasons why the Democrats’ message has not resonated with voters in a long time, but the one I think is the most important is how difficult it has become to reach their natural constituency and run a good GOTV.

While walking through a neighborhood recently, I hit upon an idea. Finding people at home may have become something of an art, so why don’t we ask people whose job it is to do it? I’m talking about repo men and process servers, the guys who know how to find anyone. If the Democrats were serious about revamping GOTV for a new era, they’d hire a bunch of people like that for maybe $200 each, put them in a room, and talk about how to reach out to people.

Responses to this are going to fall along two lines. Democrats will probably wince at the idea of enlisting “The Man” to promote democracy, but if they can help us get the message out, why not? Republicans will wonder whether people who can only be found by these means are really the people who should be voting, but I’d like to remind them that if Jesus were alive today, there’s little doubt he’d be served process more than a few times with all the trouble he raised.

I realize I’m a bit out on the edge again, but the core concern is a simple one: How can we craft new methods for GOTV that are effective in changing times? If you’re willing to consider any and all possibilities, there are some interesting options out there.

“Politics isn’t about big money or power games; it’s about the improvement of people’s lives.”

– Paul Wellstone