Hurricane Sandy GOTV Response

The week before Election Day states along the Eastern seaboard braced for Hurricane Sandy. News media called for severe flooding, mass evacuations and extended power and communication outages. FS organizers were preparing to deploy thousands of GOTV canvassers from 18 field offices and dozens of staging sites in support of Presidential and Senate battleground contests in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut, as well as the most expensive ballot initiative campaign in Maryland’s history. GOTV plans needed to be expanded quickly to account for power outages at polling places, crippled public transportation and flooded streets.

Within 24 hours, Field Strategies staff created and implemented a comprehensive Hurricane Preparedness document to ensure staff safety, account for added complexities and minimize disruptions to the staging effort. Successful execution of the plan resulted in:

• Establishing “fallback” field offices and staging sites in areas with no power
• Caravans to acquire and ration gasoline from stations within 60 miles to be used for canvasser staging and “Rides to Polls” programs
• Voter Education program using sound trucks, SMS and live and automated calls to update voters to traffic and polling location updates and changes
• Constant communication with municipal and county election officials to keep GOTV plans updated almost hourly