Canvassing

Canvassing, also known as door knocking or phone banking, is the systematic initiation of direct contact with individuals, commonly used during political campaigns.

[2] In the United States, the compilation of election returns and validation of the outcome that forms the basis of the official results is also called canvassing.

It is important to remember to speak clearly and be personable while canvassing to create meaningful conversations as well as possibly sway undecided voters.

Legal wrangling over who met the property requirements to vote was important in many campaigns, and canvassing was used to add supporters to the rolls, while investigating the claims of opponents.

As an example of the challenges, one losing candidate had identified 639 supporters in Kent for the Short Parliament election of 1640, but only 174 voted, most going home after finding out the polling would take three days.

For the priciest campaigns, these various costs added up to sums equivalent to several million pounds in today's money, causing financial hardship even for wealthy candidates.

Winning candidates would reward their supporters with patronage appointments, and direct bribery was also common; one study estimated that 20% of New York voters were compensated for their votes during Gilded Age elections.

[18] The massive paid canvassing came to an end with the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883, which limited campaign spending.

Laws were also changed in the United Kingdom to make voter registration almost automatic, removing the need for the parties to expend efforts on it.

[19] As corruption faded, parties returned to using canvassing to win votes through persuasion and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts.

Parties thus switched their canvassing resources away from persuading voters, focusing only on identifying their supporters and making sure they voted.

David Butler in his Nuffield Model of UK elections found that during the 1950s and 1960s, local campaigns had no effect on the results.

With the rise of television, resources were shifted from the ground to mass market advertising, with canvassing seen as a relic of the past.

"[18] One political scientist wrote there was a belief that canvassing was an "elaborate ritual bringing some sense of gratification to the participants, but making no difference to election results.

In Britain new studies found that unlike in earlier decades, a strong field campaign was having an effect on the result.

In the United States Alan S. Gerber and Donald Green launched a series of controlled experiments, and demonstrated that foot canvassing was one of the most effective tools available to boost voter turnout.

Subsequently, the Republicans launched their 72 Hour Program of get out the vote efforts over the last three days of a campaign, and also found demonstrable proof that it gained them several points in key races.

Expansive databases of the electorate, such as the Democrats' NGP VAN, pulled together canvassing data, consumer information, and demographic profiles to allow precise targeting of voters.

No longer would campaigns knock on all the doors in a district, rather voters who would most be persuaded to support the candidate or come out to vote could be targeted.

[27] In India, despite the million or more voters in many constituencies, parties have made the effort to have canvassers visit the door of each house in each village.

[28] In Pakistan, it has been found that canvassing is effective in increasing voter turnout and in facilitating political conversation when catered towards the men and women in the household.

[36] In 1999, Gerber and Green published their first paper presenting a rigorously controlled experiment that produced a substantial turnout boost from canvassing in a municipal election in New Haven, Connecticut.

Since then Gerber, Green, and other political scientists have conducted a program that verified those results, and tested what techniques are most effective.

[38][39] In the city of Duisburg in Germany, another study was conducted to compare the effectivity of in-person canvassing versus mail-in surveys.

In an article from the British Journal of Political Science, they found some evidence that the effectiveness in European canvasing activities is far less compared to the United States, compiling several studies of canvassing in Denmark.

[44] Many of these challenges escalated to the Supreme Court, which has ruled overwhelmingly on the side of the public's right to canvass as protected by the First Amendment.

To require a censorship through license which makes impossible the free and unhampered distribution of pamphlets strikes at the very heart of the constitutional guarantees.In 2002, the Supreme Court reconfirmed its conviction that canvassing is protected by U.S. First Amendment rights in Watchtower Society v. Village of Stratton.

Justice John Paul Stevens stated:[46]It is offensive, not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so.