The groundbreaking tech that might flip this MAGA Congressional seat
I jolted awake in the dead of night. Something, or someone, had made a sound downstairs. Panic swelled in my chest, but then I remembered– there's 3 communitarians sleeping in my living room! They're named Paxus, Pepper, and Spider-Man, and they're here to flip a coveted Congressional seat. You see, I'm the youngest Congressional nominee in the country, running a spirited race against the dreaded Brian Mast, and my high-tech friends are in town to implement a groundbreaking GOTV operation that can balance the scales. I went back to sleep with sweet dreams of unseating Brian Mast…
As crazy as it sounds, all of that is true. My name is Thomas Witkop and I'm running to take down Brian Mast on the Treasure Coast of Florida. Over the past several months I've partnered with The Flip Project– a group of artists, activists, musicians, analysts, data geeks, organizers, and more. My friends crashing in my living room were in town to set up The Flip Project's innovative methods to mobilize voters. In fact, I believe these methods are the future of Democratic campaigns.
As I got to work with Flip, our first opponent was Ron DeSantis and the Florida State Legislature. Last year, they purged nearly one million voters, majority Democrats, from voter rolls. We contacted nearly 150,000 unregistered voters and got over 10,000 re-registered!
Next was outreach to non-native English speakers, who are significantly less likely to vote (and to be registered). We began with our Haitian community, who have a large and vibrant presence but are often overlooked by local candidates. We translated our posters into Creole and posted them on the front doors of hundreds of local businesses (always with consent). The posters have QR codes that help you register to vote when scanned. Here's the fun part: Each QR code is geotagged such that we can see how much traffic each poster is getting. This allows us to adaptively strategize where to focus our future GOTV efforts, which drastically improves the effectiveness. We did the same for our Hispanic community, and now have a network of over 2,000 posters covering the entire district.
Here's an interesting stat: Non-registered voters are 3x more likely to have difficulty getting to polls. That's why we recently extended our postering operation to include hundreds of bus stops in the district. Those who rely on public transportation are more likely to have difficulty reaching poles, and less likely to be registered. Our outreach at bus stations assists voter registration and promotes the next part of the operation: Rides to the polls. To ensure that difficulty reaching polls is not a barrier to voting, we're organizing thousands of free rides to the polls through Rideshare2Vote and several generous campaign volunteers.
To complement all this, The Flip Project organizes many community-facing events that have been found to be more effective than traditional canvassing. These include singing canvas, street theatre, music videos, social media outreach, mural competitions, and block parties. Through these vibrant and diverse methods, Flip brings lively attention to our race, providing critical information in the right place, at the right time, in the right language. My staff and volunteers have been helping the Flip Project at every step of the way, and we couldn't be more grateful for the incredible work they've done. Thank you Paxus, Pepper, Spider-Man, Bean and everyone else involved!
The future is weird and wonderful. I can't wait to see how the methods employed by The Flip Project are adapted into 'traditional' campaigns. Of course, my campaign is using traditional methods as well, with hundreds of volunteers canvassing and phone-banking for myself, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (who's about to unseat Rick Scott..) and Kamala Harris. As we enter the final week of the election, these operations are sustained by our grassroots fundraising, and every additional contribution allows us to do more before the 5th. If you support our mission, any donation would be greatly appreciated. Even $5 makes a real difference! You can click here to donate.
I have a good feeling about November 5th, but we've got to finish strong!
Thomas Witkop, Witkop for Congress Campaign
Re-posted from DailyKos.com, October 29, 2024 content post.