Volunteers Will Help Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Win Big In November
A guide to DFL volunteering that is actually sort of an ode to door knocking?
Last weekend I was asked by a friend, who knows what a Democratic Party zealot I’ve been in the past, to explain to her friend how to volunteer before the upcoming election. My friend’s friend really wants to help out Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, but she’s intimidated by door knocking and postcard writing, basically all of the activities available for sign-ups on Mobilize, the website used by progressive campaigns to organize their events. And I realized that a little guide to volunteering might be helpful, especially for anyone who wants to help but is nervous or leery about talking to strangers about politics.
First off, to volunteer for a Democratic candidate will not put you in the path of MAGAs. The job of a campaign volunteer is not to change people’s minds, discuss legislative intricacies, or policies. The job of a campaign volunteer, rather, is to remind people to make a plan to vote. The campaign staff will have already identified, through the use of the VAN (Voterfile database), the people who lean towards voting for Democrats, but might need a little extra nudge to get to the polls on or before November 6. And some volunteer opportunities don’t even involve interacting with voters at all!
Let’s start with one of the easiest ways to support a campaign:
Yard Sign
Technically, with a yard sign, you’re just volunteering a little bit of ad space on your lawn or in your apartment window. How easy is it to get a Harris - Walz yard sign? Judging by the number and variety of yard signs in my Southwest Minneapolis neighborhood, pretty easy!
A yard sign is basically the least you can do, in my opinion, unless you live in some red MAGA zone enclave where all of your neighbors are automatic weapons enthusiasts and it would be literally dangerous for you to display Democratic candidate support on your property.
I’m not judging anyone who doesn’t have a yard sign, either. Here’s a photo of my actual yard sign situation this year. No Harris - Walz love, not yet.
Here’s a little pro tip from a formerly profligate DFL volunteer: if you volunteer hard enough, campaigns will just text you asking if you want a yard sign, then pop them into the Creeping Charlie covered ground of your front yard when you’re not home. It’s a cool little reward for attending DFL caucuses and conventions, and knocking on doors and making phone calls. Which is a great segue into:
Door Knocks
Door knocking is my favorite way to volunteer for Democrats. Here’s the deal: I love walking. I love looking at other people’s houses and yards. And that’s basically all there is to door knocking. You go for a walk, and you have a great excuse to view landscaping and front doors up close. Without talking to very many people because most people don’t answer their doors! Thanks to the ubiquity of privacy-invading technology like Ring doorbells that let homeowners screen doorbell rings.
Back in the olden days, you used to get a clipboard with a list of addresses and potential voters. (You know I love a clipboard). Volunteers don’t knock every house on the block. They zig and zag across the street, getting to the cherry-picked addresses that a campaign staffer pulled from the VAN. Mostly, instead of talking to people, you drop off campaign literature. Pro tip: bring a Sharpie marker so you can write a cute little note saying, “Sorry I missed you; be sure to vote DFL!” on the candidate flyers.
Over the years, the paper list of addresses has been replaced by an app called the miniVAN, which you should install on your phone before you go door knocking. It’s super easy. Instead of handwriting info about your voter interactions, you just click a button or two in the app, which saves time and labor for the campaign. You still might get a clipboard to hold the campaign literature you’ll be handing off to voters, or folding up and leaving in a door handle.
When people do open the door, usually one of the following scenarios happens:
The person you’re trying to reach doesn’t live there anymore. This is super helpful for your candidate’s campaign! You mark them in the database, then the campaign knows they don’t need to bother returning to that address.
The person you’re trying to reach doesn’t want to talk to you. In Minnesota, the only state in which I’ve ever door knocked, this means the voter will be super polite but firm, take your literature, say, “Yup, I’m voting,” and close the door as quickly as possible. Great! You mark them in the database, then the campaign has made a point of contact.
Very, very occasionally, you’ll get a super enthusiastic MSNBC viewer who wants to talk for a long time about national politics. Go ahead, engage, you’re making their day. Then, half an hour (or more) later, after you’ve listened to their complaints about J.D. Vance, the entire Trump family, Mike Johnson, Tucker Carlson, Exxon Mobil, Project 2025, and other offenses against humanity, you’ll need to be polite but firm, hand over your literature, say, “Thanks for chatting!” and bound down their front sidewalk as quickly as possible. You mark them in the database. Another point of contact for the campaign!
In all of my years of door knocking in Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs, I have only had one actually negative interaction while door knocking. It was with a guy drinking beer in his front yard on an unseasonably hot (climate fire) September afternoon in Cottage Grove, MN, and as I introduced myself, he rejected my appeal for a scientist candidate who wanted to clean up 3M’s PFAS pollution by shouting a racist epithet at me. As the TikTok kids would say, I was very demure, very mindful, as I backed away as quickly as I could, marked the voter as Lean Republican (which tells the campaign to never contact him again, he’s a waste of time), and moved on to the next address. All in all, it made for a sorta funny story and gave me a fantastic excuse to never door knock in the outlying suburbs ever again.
If you need further inspo to get on the doors in the next month, I heard on a recent episode of the Wedge LIVE! podcast that Timberwolves fan favorite Naz Reid lives in House District 61A!
After door knocking, probably my next favorite way to volunteer is:
Phone Banks
Phone banks sound kind of scary because we all hate getting calls from randos, right? And you don’t want to be that rando calling people who hate randos, right? But phone banks are not actually that bad! For one, if you’re volunteering for a Democratic candidates or the Democratic party, they’re only going to have you call people who are inclined to vote Democratic. You don’t have to convince anyone to vote for Kamala; you’re just reminding low-propensity voters to vote.
A quick perusal of the Mobilize options for phone banks in Minneapolis tells me that DFL phone banks are back to in-person and some require you to bring your own laptop and phone. However! You’ll use campaign software that automatically dials potential voters numbers, and your personal phone number doesn’t show up as the caller. Phew, right? You’ll also get a training before the automatic dialing starts, and a script to follow. Also, in my experience, not a lot of people actually pick up the phone. And the people who do pick up? Are pretty nice. And the ones who start out mad that you’re calling? Can easily be appeased by this next pro tip from a formerly profligate DFL volunteer: if you vote early, the phone calls and texts will stop!
Speaking of texts:
Text Banks
Text Banks are a great way to participate in Get Out the Vote efforts if you don’t want to talk to anyone on the phone or in person, or if you want to help out a campaign or cause outside of where you live. Another quick search on Mobilize tells me that there are a ton of opportunities to text for Democrats across the country.
Back in 2020, I was on a regular Text for Tina crew (Tina as in Tina Smith, my favorite of Minnesota’s fabulous Senators). It was pretty simple. I downloaded the necessary app onto my phone and on Tuesday nights, I’d send out a mass text to potential voters. Then I’d spend the next couple of hours replying to any questions that came in from those potential voters. The replies were pre-written, so I basically had to press a couple of buttons on my phone for a couple of hours. The text banking software was so easy to navigate that one could easily hand off one’s phone to, say, a seven-year-old child and ask them to Text for Tina while one finished preparing a snack for that same seven-year-old. Text Banking = easier than making a snack!
Speaking of snacks:
Fundraisers
If you get invited to a fundraiser for a Democratic Party candidate, you should totes go! Sometimes the invitations will have a suggested donation amount, and sometimes that suggested donation amount will start high-ish. Don’t let the $100, $250, $500, $1000 suggestion donation scare you off! Give what you can, and if that’s $10, that’s plenty. As someone who has organized a handful of fundraisers over the years, the point isn’t just raising money. The point is also community building, giving voters a chance to connect with the candidate and other elected officials, and enjoying snacks. And, as a fundraising organizer, I was always way more focused on the optics of the event. I wanted a big party with lots of people who would eat all the snacks. The total amount raised was actually not as important to me.
In Minnesota, there’s a Political Contribution Refund program where you can get refunded by the State for political contributions of up to $75 for an individual and $150 for a married couple. So you can go to a fundraiser, give $75, wait a week until the campaign’s Treasurer sends you a form, mail the form, and get your $75 deposited right back into your bank account!
And if you ever get asked to help organize a fundraiser, you should totally do it! It’s party planning! So fun! You don’t have to talk politics at all, or risk interacting with any Lean Republican voters. You can talk about Costco lists, boxed wine, compostable paper plates, and the carbon footprint of helium balloons (it’s bad).
Now on to my least favorite volunteer gig:
Poll Watcher (Poll Challenger)
Back in 2020 I was desperate to do whatever, anything, everything I could to defeat Donald Trump, and I had ascended the local DFL ranks to Vice Chair of my Senate District, which meant that I received approximately twenty-five emails per day asking me to help out the Party, and I felt compelled to respond affirmatively to every single thing the Party asked me to do. Which is how I found myself attending Poll Challenger training, spending about six hours on Primary Day observing election judges and voters at a high school gymnasium in South Minneapolis, and spending about twelve hours on Election Day seated next to a MAGA Poll Challenger [who was sneezing, snorting, coughing, and wearing a mask incorrectly!] observing election judges and voters at a church in Richfield, MN. My job was to report any problems with the polling location. And, this being Minnesota, the polling location was meticulously run and there were really no problems to report.
While I wouldn’t do this again because my noblesse oblige, in terms of the Party, has gone down to a much healthier, reasonable level in the last two years; and I can’t devote an entire school day, plus the required trainings, to this particular aspect of Election Day. However! Poll Challenger is a great volunteer opportunity for anyone who wants to spend the day at a polling place looking out for nefarious behavior, long lines, and campaign sign violations.
Readers! Tell me all about your volunteering preferences—do you like texting? Phoning? Door knocking? Poll watching? How are you going to help Harris - Walz in the next five weeks?