4 ms·

I ran for board of education and it was an amazing experience. I went door to door in my small town, talked to hundreds of people, showed up at every town even

I ran for board of education and it was an amazing experience. I went door to door in my small town, talked to hundreds of people, showed up at every town event wearing my blazer and nametag with "candidate for board of education". No BOE candidate before me had spent money on lawn signs - but they had to after me. I gave speeches, raised money, bought voter lists from the county and loaded them into our Oracle database at work (into my own DEV schema, of course, this was before I had cheap MySQL hosting) to identify the folks most likely to support me, used Google Maps and other mapping tools to map them out for personal visits. And then I lost, and it was crushing. On election night when I stood in the election office and heard the precinct numbers come in one by one, I realized I'd never failed at anything significant before. But I'd do it all again - I will once my kids are older - it was one of the best experiences of my life.

L_Rahman 10y ago
Why do you think you lost?
- exhilaration 10y ago
  When you're running on your own against incumbents who've been in office for years (decades sometimes) you've really gotta work hard and build up the kind of contact data the big campaigns have easy access too. For example, I had trouble asking for people's phone numbers so I could call them (or robocall them) on election day - that was my own weakness, I bet someone with more sales skills could have done a better job there but I'm just an engineer. I had no e-mail addresses either. I should have also visited the retirement homes in town, I only went door to door. The churches never returned my calls but I did try to visit them. Lots of factors - I'm sure my South Asian name also lost me some votes but hey, I bet I can get past that next time.
SSilver2k2 10y ago
Thank you for running.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  > Thank you for running. Why? You've got no idea what his policies were! They could have been absolutely appalling, oppressive dystopian ideas, standing for everything you're against (I'm sure they weren't, exhilaration).
  - bmmayer1 10y ago
    or her policies
    - chrisseaton 10y ago
      It's ridiculous to argue this, but if you look at his comments, he appears to identify as a man.
      - bmmayer1 10y ago
        Not from the OP's comment at least, just thought it was wrong to assume
        chrisseaton 10y ago
        You're assuming I assumed (I did assume, but so did you, so let's just not pick fights with others).
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    This last election day, only 4 of the races on my ballot were even contested. The policy could have been to chop up all logsfromblammo into kindling and use them light fires under wicker cages filled with crying children, and I still would have voted for it, just because it wasn't for the smug, major-party incumbent. So yeah, thanks for running. Because of you, someone was able to make a choice.
  - CapitalistCartr 10y ago
    We desperately need more people to care enough to run. Since most of the power got concentrated in Washington, local politics is way to isolated from the rest of us. I'm poor, and I'm considering a run for a local office.
Artistry121 10y ago
Awesome. I would love to hear more. Great way to leverage technology to compete.
lazyant 10y ago
> bought voter lists ... to identify the folks most likely to support me what info is on those lists that you can use to identify supporters?
- roymurdock 10y ago
  A google search turns up this website that claims to have voter lists by political district, party affiliation, gender, ethnicity, wealth, among other things. http://www.completecampaigns.com/voter-lists-online.asp http://www.completecampaigns.com/voter-lists-online.asp
- specialist 10y ago
  Government records your name, gender, age, address, voter id, voting history. Pretty sure anything else is value added by vendors. Some exemptions (not listed) for judges, victims, witness protection. YMMV depending on jurisdiction.
- exhilaration 10y ago
  Three things, their voting record, their party registration, and any demographic information you can figure out. The voter lists I've seen in NJ and PA tell you what elections voters have voted in, so you can eliminate registered voters that don't bother to vote. Additionally, in NJ, the school board elections were on a different date (in the spring) than the general election, so you could really target the 3-4% of voters who actually bothered to vote for school board. Party registration is provided and be helpful if you want to position yourself as the democrat or republican, even if the race is technically nonpartisan. If you want to target particular ethnic groups (latino, south asian, korean, chinese) you can do searches for common first or last names. Grouping by address can help you figure if there's a family living here - you also get date of birth - and maybe they've got a kid that just graduated from high school and might be more interested in a particular school issue. Some basic SQL skills can go a long way here.
specialist 10y ago
Running for office is illuminating. Everyone's behavior makes perfect sense (is predictable) once you see how the game is played. Everyone should run for office at least once. They should also lobby (try to get a law changed) too. Ideally, before running for office.

L_Rahman 10y ago

Why do you think you lost?

exhilaration 10y ago
When you're running on your own against incumbents who've been in office for years (decades sometimes) you've really gotta work hard and build up the kind of contact data the big campaigns have easy access too. For example, I had trouble asking for people's phone numbers so I could call them (or robocall them) on election day - that was my own weakness, I bet someone with more sales skills could have done a better job there but I'm just an engineer. I had no e-mail addresses either. I should have also visited the retirement homes in town, I only went door to door. The churches never returned my calls but I did try to visit them. Lots of factors - I'm sure my South Asian name also lost me some votes but hey, I bet I can get past that next time.

SSilver2k2 10y ago

Thank you for running.

chrisseaton 10y ago
> Thank you for running. Why? You've got no idea what his policies were! They could have been absolutely appalling, oppressive dystopian ideas, standing for everything you're against (I'm sure they weren't, exhilaration).
- bmmayer1 10y ago
  or her policies
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    It's ridiculous to argue this, but if you look at his comments, he appears to identify as a man.
    - bmmayer1 10y ago
      Not from the OP's comment at least, just thought it was wrong to assume
      - chrisseaton 10y ago
        You're assuming I assumed (I did assume, but so did you, so let's just not pick fights with others).
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  This last election day, only 4 of the races on my ballot were even contested. The policy could have been to chop up all logsfromblammo into kindling and use them light fires under wicker cages filled with crying children, and I still would have voted for it, just because it wasn't for the smug, major-party incumbent. So yeah, thanks for running. Because of you, someone was able to make a choice.
- CapitalistCartr 10y ago
  We desperately need more people to care enough to run. Since most of the power got concentrated in Washington, local politics is way to isolated from the rest of us. I'm poor, and I'm considering a run for a local office.

Artistry121 10y ago

Awesome. I would love to hear more. Great way to leverage technology to compete.

lazyant 10y ago

> bought voter lists ... to identify the folks most likely to support me what info is on those lists that you can use to identify supporters?

roymurdock 10y ago
A google search turns up this website that claims to have voter lists by political district, party affiliation, gender, ethnicity, wealth, among other things. http://www.completecampaigns.com/voter-lists-online.asp http://www.completecampaigns.com/voter-lists-online.asp
specialist 10y ago
Government records your name, gender, age, address, voter id, voting history. Pretty sure anything else is value added by vendors. Some exemptions (not listed) for judges, victims, witness protection. YMMV depending on jurisdiction.
exhilaration 10y ago
Three things, their voting record, their party registration, and any demographic information you can figure out. The voter lists I've seen in NJ and PA tell you what elections voters have voted in, so you can eliminate registered voters that don't bother to vote. Additionally, in NJ, the school board elections were on a different date (in the spring) than the general election, so you could really target the 3-4% of voters who actually bothered to vote for school board. Party registration is provided and be helpful if you want to position yourself as the democrat or republican, even if the race is technically nonpartisan. If you want to target particular ethnic groups (latino, south asian, korean, chinese) you can do searches for common first or last names. Grouping by address can help you figure if there's a family living here - you also get date of birth - and maybe they've got a kid that just graduated from high school and might be more interested in a particular school issue. Some basic SQL skills can go a long way here.

specialist 10y ago

Running for office is illuminating. Everyone's behavior makes perfect sense (is predictable) once you see how the game is played. Everyone should run for office at least once. They should also lobby (try to get a law changed) too. Ideally, before running for office.