Article and photos by Phoebe Taylor-Vuolo
For some people, filling out a ballot for Election Day simply isn’t enough. So they take it upon themselves to encourage others to register, then vote, and arrange help if they need assistance getting there. This is a tale of three people who tried to turn out the vote.
On the Sunday before Election Day, Sy Bucholz, Helise Harrington and Paul Harris set out at dawn for Pennsylvania.
The three Clinton supporters left their homes in Westchester, just north of New York City, and drove to Allentown, in Pennsylvania – a toss-up state, according to the polls – going door-to-door to speak with registered Democrats who had been inconsistent in their voting, hoping to persuade them to vote.
“The effort to flip people at the last minute is probably much less productive than the effort to get out people who are already convinced,” said Harris, 60, an energy consultant, explaining that get-out-the-vote efforts would also focus on making sure voters knew where they were supposed to vote and signing them up for transportation, if needed.
The trio’s first destination was a “staging point” in Orefield, Pa., the home of Roxane Eclund, 63, and Mike Betker, 57, who participated in previous election efforts but went further this year, turning their house into a location for Clinton volunteers.
“We can have local people, from this area, as volunteers, coming to a central place, a familiar place, act as a community,” said Eclund. “We’ve always been very active in the community, so this was a way that we could participate in this election.”
Every election brings worries of low voting rates, and this year the fear of voter apathy has been high, because so many voters of both parties seem to have a low opinion of both major candidates, and surveys have found many African Americans and voters under age 35 unenthusiastic about their choices.
Harris, Harrington and Bucholz did, in fact, run up against the so-called “Enthusiasm Gap” during their canvassing for Clinton and Katie McGinty, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate, as they knocked on doors in two Lehigh Valley communities and one suburb of Allentown.
“For seven buildings I got mostly Not Home, very few people to talk with, and then suddenly, building K, I come upon apartment after apartment where there are Hillary supporters, happy Hillary supporters,” said Bucholz, 80, a regulatory lawyer on Wall Street. He was particularly pleased to have found a disabled father and his son, who needed help getting to the polling station. “The father looked like he was having a really hard time,” he said, “but he wanted to go vote, and I think that was great.”
The Eclund-Betker home provides a comfortable base for volunteers canvassing in the area, and has phone-bank operations set up in the living room. In recent months some out-of-state volunteers have stayed in their home.
“It’s important to get people to vote. A lot of the people we’re contacting might not vote. And that’s why there are thousands of people across the state, doing similar things,” said Betker, adding that beyond his personal support of Clinton, “I think it’s an extra motivation who the opponent is.”
Some might find the door-to-door obstacles daunting, between voters who already planned on voting and didn’t need assistance, undecided voters certain that they would either contribute a write-in vote or avoid the polls altogether, and Trump supporters curious as to how they got on the list.
Amid a sea of unanswered doors and brusque residents were bright glimpses of what door-to-door volunteering could accomplish. Harris spoke with a women who was excited to see volunteers and told him she’d be canvassing, too, if it weren’t for her 97-year-old grandmother. Harrington talked with an enthusiastic elderly man who planned to go to the polls with this wife.
For all the obstacles faced, on the way home that night, after 13 hours of driving and volunteering, Harrington, a lawyer and mediation specialist, said she felt better knowing that she had participated in the election in ways beyond just voting.
“For me, it feels important to me that Hillary win, that Trump not win,” she said. “And part of it is guilt—I could not live with myself if I had done nothing, and Trump won.”
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