Adventures in Phonebanking

Last Friday, I did phonebanking for the Biden/Harris campaign in Wisconsin. Although there were a lot of “hangups”, or voters who hangup after you introduce yourself and why you are talking. (Generally, it’s something along the lines of, “Hi, is this [voter]? It’s [volunteer] with the [political group]. Are you supporting us?”), it went relatively smoothly thanks to the new “Autodialer” system. Basically, it calls a list of numbers by its own while you wait, and connects you once the person on the other line speaks. This results in calls being done much, much more quicker and being more efficient.

After approximately half of an hour of banking, I finally called an undecided voter. Early on, she mentioned that she was eighty-three years old, which I thought was very interesting. A teen talking to an eighty-three year old about politics seems like the punchline of a joke, but, I promise you, it was true.

We started to talk about how our generations had grown up in very different worlds, with mine having to battle all of the problems they and their children had caused. Somehow, this evolved into the polarization of Washington, and how they could not get anything done in terms of policy. I talked about the COVID relief bill, and how important it was to give more funding to the USPS during this pandemic. Later, we talked about the price of college and how Biden’s plan for higher education involved technical training as well as other education. We ended up talking for over half an hour, which is quite a lot of time in the phonebanking world.

This story is one of the many reasons I decided to phonebank- it allows real conversations with real people, whom I share very little with. I feel like I connected with that person, and that I made a difference- she ended up leaning towards supporting Democrats. It also shows that no matter the age gap, people tend to have the same critiques and thoughts on how to make our country better. I’m excited to continue to share more stories like this with you as the election draws nearer!