2014-06-12
Ben Hermann
On April 5 this year, election day for the WA senate, I set up a booth at Beldon Primary School, complete with a solar-powered laptop.
I had the idea of the solar panels because of the experience at the Wanneroo markets, where we had a stall over a number of weekends with a laptop providing information such as how the preferences work, and about policies.
To do that for a full day you need more power than an internal battery, so I set up my private solar panels usually used for camping, hooked up a car battery as buffer, a small inverter and a laptop, that also played music!
For this year's election I had the idea of particular banners that could be produced relatively cheap yet be re-usable. I found a place to do that, designed the banners, had our Regional group decide on the final design to be printed, had them officiaally authorised by Jess (WA campaign coordinator) and got them distributed. I set my booth up such that the banner would be raised above and behind my stand using items similar to tent poles and straps to have the banner free standing. The Libs had a crew covering all fence lines as usual. While no other party had a stand to speak of I put up a large table with two chairs, the panels and an umbrella for decoration. The flag was tied to the table as an extra eye catcher.
This setup was unique; none of the other parties had anything like it. It did attract a small number of people to have a look at flyers on the table or have a chat about the solar setup.
Downside was that the setup took quite a while, and I had to do it on my own which was particularly bad as the gates to the school for the booth setup only opened at 6.30 am, by which time the Libs came with three people.
This particular booth is difficult to cover as there are two major and a third smaller entrance, with people streaming to the actual polling place on about five different paths while setup of booths is only allowed in a particular area; another reason why I tried to compensate that with the raised banner and music. Note the distance between posters makes it impossible for other parties to put theirs in between.
The fact that I doorknocked all of Beldon myself helped on polling day because many people recognised my face; they showed that they did in a very positive way, some came out of the polling booth with their feedback that they had indeed voted Greens. This included two Labor members/union officials and a former Liberal voter that I can recall!
In general, if the doorknocking can be tied together with the booths it will have add-on effects: While doorknocking I asked the people whether they'd be voting at Beldon PS. When they responded yes, I would mention that they would be seeing me again right there! This enhanced their recognition of the party, it stuck in their mind that we were the only party to take the effort to door knock, and the same person, who spent his private time doing so, would be on the booth again. I received a number of comments about my passion and commitment.
It may have swayed the odd voter.
But did it work?
Results, Sep '13 vs. Apr '14: 9.6% vs. 20.2%
The sister suburb of Heathridge went at the same time from 9.6% to 16.1% (from memory). The difference between Beldon and Heathridge was the local doorknocking combined with the extra effort at the booth.
The doorknockers can act as wonderful advertising platform, subtly or in-your-face, as required.
I used a leaflet that I modified to advertise WA 2.0, not only if I missed people, but also very actively because of the embedded links — QR codes appear modern.
Linking is probably the keyword. The doorknocker re-appears at the polling place, the hint towards a better WA shows up on the leaflets and gets promoted in public speeches, solar panels as icon for clean energy at the booth, music as a fresh approach to serious matters, etc.
I hope this helps.