SDOP Volunteers Bring New Voters to the Polls

November 08, 2012

Three months ago when we began our campaign, our goal of 7,500 pledges to vote from infrequent voters living within City Council District 9 seemed unreachable.  With great gratitude to all of our volunteers, we did it. We surpassed our goals thanks to our volunteers’ hard work, faith, and belief in our democratic system.  We did this because we want our elected leaders to listen to our voices in our neighborhoods, and we know that changing the pattern of voting in our communities is the only way to do this.  And they will hear about this. Many races were decided by a tight margin this year and our work helped make the difference.

Prior to Election Day, we knocked on 11,722 doors.  We got 8,597 pledges to vote.  We filled 838 volunteer shifts, and we made over 20,000 phone calls. On Election Day, we had nearly 100 volunteers and had polling station teams at 20 sites, made calls to another 10, and were able to knock on over 1000 doors!  We had face-to-face conversations with nearly 500 voters, and made another 3000 phone calls during which we talked to an additional 1028 voters.  Collectively we made almost 33,000 attempts and directly spoke to over 11,519 voters.

And we weren’t alone.  Statewide PICO California spoke to nearly 145,000 voters and played a major role in passing Proposition 30.  Across the nation, PICO National Network’s Land of Opportunity voter engagement program had 636,995 face-to-face and on-the-phone conversations with voters.  We made more than 3.9-million phone calls, knocked on 203,000 doors, and directly contacted 1.6-million voters to encourage them to vote (including doors, phones, events and mail).  Just in the last two days of the election season- the most critical for moving infrequent voters to the polls - PICO organizations made more than one-quarter million Get-Out-The-Vote calls and door knocks.

This entire effort would not have been possible without the unprecedented collaboration happening in San Diego within the nonprofit organizational community. Special thanks goes to all of the volunteers who have walked with us, including Reality Changers, United Taxi Workers of San Diego, the Employee Rights Center, City Heights Community Development Corporation, Mid-City CAN Youth Council, Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice (ICWJ), Center for Policy Initiatives (CPI), San Diego Housing Federation, Community Housing Works, the Hunger Coalition, the Little Saigon Foundation, Catholic Charities, 211 San Diego, students from Point Loma Nazarene University, students and faculty from San Diego State University, and many, many more people who decided this campaign was so important that they called and volunteered to work too.  

Congratulations and many thanks once more to our wonderful volunteers.