Precinct Chair Manual (Previously known as Take Back NC )

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Alan Webster
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1 Precinct Chair Manual (Previously known as Take Back NC ) Prepared by The North Carolina Republican Party and The District & County Chairman s Association Robin Hayes, NCGOP Chairman Bill Wright, DCCA Chairman March 2013

2 CONTENTS Developing your Precinct What s A Precinct? How Do You Win Your Precinct Step 1 Growing Your Numbers Step 2 Identify Voters in my Precinct Getting Started GOP Data Center Step 3 GOTV (Get Out The Vote) Due to your hard work and support of the North Carolina Republican Party and our candidates, our state was one of the national party s bright spots during this past election cycle. We were able to carry our state for our presidential nominee and were one of just two states won by Obama in 2008 that went red in Our many victories on November 6 th were no accident. The NCGOP, along with your help, put together one of the most impressive ground games ever. We made a plan, we executed it, and we won. Not only was our state successful in carrying the Republican Presidential nominee, but we were also able to continue to protect and grow conservative values across every other level of government. We elected the state s first Republican Governor in over two decades. Our Republican Congressional delegation grew from six members to nine members. We even extended the Republican majorities in both the State House and State Senate chambers. Though we have worked tirelessly to accomplish these amazing goals, we must not sit on our success. We must continue to be on the offensive in order to continue to grow and protect conservative choices in the great state of North Carolina. 2

3 DEVELOPING YOUR PRECINCT What s A Precinct? Once you register to vote at your place of residence, you are assigned to a precinct according to where you live. Everyone in your precinct votes at the same place on Election Day. There may be only a handful of precincts or hundreds in your county it is all depends on the population of your county. Your precinct is an important part of our political plan for 2013 and We must work to win every precinct in every county in every corner of our state. If one precinct fails, that one precinct is hurting our overall efforts to not only local elections, but defeat Senator Kay Hagan and the rest of the Democrat ticket. Not only will all of our legislative races be vitally important, but the North Carolina Supreme Court could experience significant turnover as well. Three democratic leaning members and one conservative candidate will be up for election. This is an enormous opportunity to protect and grow conservative values in our state. Good Planning is the key to attaining any worthwhile goal. This holds true in business, family life, civic activities, and especially in today s politics. Make sure you are working in conjunction with your local County Party and any local candidates. They may know of people in your precinct to get involved and help you grow your organization! To be successful this year and next, our ultimate goal is to ensure that every voter in your precinct who supports Republican candidates gets to the polls during Early Voting on Election Day. So how do we be successful? It is a three-step process grow your numbers in your precinct organization, identify potential voters in your precinct and get them out to vote during election season! STEP 1 Growing Your Numbers To ensure this success you first must develop your precinct. This is the most important step to take because as a precinct chair, you should be the recruiter-in-chief and recruit others in your precinct to come to meetings and get involved in precinct and county activities. Every strong organization starts with one and through hard work and a strong message, your organization can grow from one person to two people to four people to eight people, and on and on. As the Precinct Leader, the Republican Party and its candidates are counting on you to grow your precinct and complete the following activities between now and Election Day 2013: First and foremost: Use events such as your County Convention or Lincoln/Reagan Dinner to recruit new volunteers. o Hold monthly or bi-monthly precinct meetings to network with your existing precinct volunteers. o Ensure all contact information is correct so you may keep them up to date on any events, meeting or announcements 3

4 o These meetings can be at a coffee shop, at someone s house wherever in the precinct where a group of Republicans can get together and organize! o Grow your precinct organization by recruiting new volunteers o Getting more people involved helps you out in your efforts to turn out the vote. o Set a goal of two to three more each meeting. o Turn your new recruits into block captains A block captain will work on their block or neighborhood and has the ability to locate Republican voters who are most likely to volunteer for a candidate or cause by getting to know your neighbors. Many Republicans have the desire to volunteer but are reluctant because they have not been asked. Block captains can reach these folks first and not only will your precinct gain valuable volunteers, but also motivate Republicans to vote. It is extremely important to put a heavy effort in recruiting individuals that are interested in becoming either election poll workers or poll observers. Poll Observers are credentialed by the County Board of Elections to observe the election process. Poll workers are individuals who work outside of the polling location and help disperse conservative voter guides to potential voters. o Know your members keep a list of your precinct member s name/address/ and stay in constant contact with them. You may be the only Republican that they hear from. Use the list to measure your growth! o After each meeting, give members of your precinct organization an action to help grow your precinct! It s important to always give your people some action to complete before the next meeting! o Sample Actions Contact every Republican in your neighborhood and get one of them to attend the next precinct meeting. Collect 10 s and cell phone numbers before the next meeting Even if these people aren t involved due to time constraints, we can still contact them with special events and announcements. Register 10 new people to vote before the next meeting to grow our Republican numbers! Attend a local event a fair, football game, or other large, public event and sign people up or hold a voter registration drive. Your county GOP may be already attending with a booth and they always need people to have a presence at the booth with stickers and other literature to be handed out. Work as phone bankers in the local Victory office in even years or with the local campaign. 4

5 STEP 2 Identify Voters in Your Precinct You have been working on growing your precinct organization by recruiting other Republicans in your precinct to join your meetings at your house, nearby coffee shop or wherever you choose to meet. Now is to use this organization to begin contacting voters in your precinct. It is important for precinct leaders and their organization to do the following 1. Find and register all unregistered potential Republicans in the precinct. a. In every precinct, there are potential Republicans who have never registered or are new to the area and have not yet registered under their new address. b. In order to maximize voter turnout on Election Day, all potential Republicans must register to vote. c. Your county chair will be provided a new movers list of previously registered republicans that have moved into your county. These voters are either from out of state or another county and they have yet to register at their new address. 2. Find and identify registered Unaffiliated and Democrats who lean Republican - Operation Switch a. By carrying out various voter identification programs, a precinct chairman will able to locate and identify Unaffiliated and Democrat voters who favor Republican ideals. b. These are the voters who are most likely to change their voter registration and join the Republican Party. (Operation Switch) c. By switching these voters, a precinct will grow in both numbers and resources. i. For example knock on a door of an unaffiliated voter and ask if they support Obamacare, want more spending and more government. If there answers to all those are no, more than likely they tend to vote Republican. Congratulations, you just identified a potential Republican voter! How do we know who is who? We are able to keep track who people are through GOP Data Center. GOP Data Center is a database containing historical information on voters for the purpose of assisting your Get out the Vote (GOTV) efforts and other areas of the precinct organization. There is no tool that is more valuable to help you organizing and contacting voters in your Precinct than GOP Data Center. GOP Data Center is a voter registration program that has all the available registration information about a voter. NOT, of course, how they voted, but detailed information that is included on a person s registration form (except the birthdates). Voter registration information is compiled into a database that permits the user to access this information based on selected criteria. It is a central database of voters that Republican campaigns and parties can use to manage data and to target voters for continued outreach. The Republican National Committee pays for the ongoing use of this program and the North Carolina Republican Party contracts with the RNC for the use of this program at no cost to the party. The NC Republican Party in turn, provides access to local parties and candidates. 5

6 Data is retrieved from the North Carolina State Board of Elections periodically and sent to the Republican National Committee to be updated into the GOP Data Center program. The wealth of information that is available makes this program a valuable resource. If a candidate or party gets the list of voters that they do have to the polls, they will win elections! Through your County Chairman and your District Chairman, you will be able to get trained on how to use GOP Data Center to help you and your precinct volunteers identify voters, and pull registered voter lists in an efficient manner, empowering you to engage these voters. You can ask your county chair or the NCGOP headquarters to pull lists but if you get trained yourself, you can do it whenever you want and upload the data so you and your precinct can work faster and smarter! Registering Voters An important task of your precinct organization will be voter registration. As your precinct organization grows with volunteers and you start identifying voters, you will encounter people in your precinct that are new to town or are not registered to vote at their current address. Every member of your precinct organization should be well-armed with voter registration forms and should turn those back to you as soon as possible! The more folks who are registered Republicans, the more likely we are to win! STEP 3 GET OUT THE VOTE or GOTV Okay, so you have a great precinct organization that has grown from you and your neighbor to a large group of committed folks that live in your area that have been spending time identifying voters and educating them on our great Republican candidates. You have asked folks in your precinct if they are registered to vote, if not, then you have been registering them as a Republican. You have asked folks in your precinct if they support conservative ideals and if there aren t registered Republican, you have asked them to switch their voter registration. Now what? It s time to get these people to the polls! Once voting has begun with Absentee ballots, the #1 focus of any campaign is getting their voters to vote during Early Voting, mail in their ballots or go to the polls on Election Day. By following the GOTV plan of the County Party or campaign, a Precinct Chairman has the ability to turn out his/her precinct in record numbers. Remember, every Republican that doesn t cast a ballot has essentially voted for the opponent. The first day of early voting is the first day of the election cycle and North Carolina voters have 16 days to go and vote before Election Day. You and your precinct organization should treat the first day of Early Voting like its Election Day itself you want to get everyone in your Precinct to go vote on that first day! 6

7 Why? Every person that we know is going to vote Republican is someone we can check off our call list of people we need to go vote and can move on to someone less likely to vote. Precincts should coordinate with State, County, and campaign GOTV plans; however, it is vital to the success of all entities that the Precincts take initiative in getting their neighborhood Republican s to the polls. Questions or comments? Please contact: The North Carolina Republican Party P.O. Box Raleigh, NC (919)

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