Voter’s Day 2021, your right & duty
“Hey, let’s be careful out there.”
This zoetic message is all about what I learned before the polling results materıalızed.
It would be nice if you and I, the readers, have exercised our constitutional right to vote today, or earlier. There’s a good chance this being an off year for elections, excepting local decisions for township trustees, ward councilor, school board members, mayors, and the like, you may not have voted.
Door after door, hour after hour, has been the ‘normal’…
Life can be quite puzzling, very complicated, often does not allow political thoughts to be common place in an individual’s activities. That said, there are plenty of well reasoned inclinations for us to vote. Healthcare, medicare services, public education and safety in our neighborhoods, and social security pensions, take priorities for our adherence to mark our votes, including absentee ballots or polling place ballots.
Tax expenditures are decided by those voting. Transit, transportation lines, and Infrastructure strategies can be determine by popular votes. Voting power and rights are drawn by those of us maintaining are constitutionally given voter rights. Our occupations are moved by voting.
Well, I was canvassing in a suburban track north of the downtown area, ringing ringtones, knocking on doors, usually leaving the door tag on the door knob because the resident wasn’t home, or pretended not to be home. Door after door, hour after hour, has been the ‘normal’ for the past six weeks.
…ringing their door ding dongs on Halloween
Our campaigning training guide doesn’t expound on Supreme Court decisions. Despite that, it does comment on some sound advice if confronted with anti-solicitation verbiage and / or signage. Simply, and politely, walk away. My own personal encounters suggest the white thirty-something male crowd predominate the solicitation signage proponents on suburban sited residences, as I have observed throughout the canvassing. I wonder how many of these suburban dads yell at trick or treating children ringing their door’s ding dongs on Halloween?
… and the lack of a controlled civil voice
Now, I have arrived at a new door. I noticed a small ‘no soliciting’ sign. I’ve been advised that canvassing is not soliciting, therefore the signage did not register itself as a big deal. The alleged home owner opens up the house front door, quickly points to the sign adhered to the ranch burg bungalow. I tried to ask why canvassing applies to the sign. I’m not soliciting, however to no avail, strictly a nasty face and matching words, foaming at the mouth, are sent my way. I turn and move to the next door.
At the next house, I was there to talk to a registered thirty-something woman voter, with an undecided vote bent. Unfortunately for me, the male of the house comes to the door. He starts questioning what I want at his portal, with a binge of nonsensical questions of me, even before I can introduce myself and the purpose of knocking at the door. I was there trying to ask to speak to the female resident from the campaign’s database. The thirty-something male starts into a quick rage about solicitation. I know what I need to do.
I start backing up, arms spread out, hands dangling, keeping face to face with this raging resident. He proceeds to yell at the TOP of his lungs. As I slowly turn my head, I can see neighbors a half a block away, barely straining to hear what all the commotion is about. I continue to walk slowly backwards, hands out, smiling, not speaking. I am trying to exit a freakish experience with this white thirty-something male who is unhinged, out of control, to an unknown end. I walk to the vehicle, sit in the driver’s seat, make a few notes within the database. The notes are mainly to warn any other future canvasser to avoid the last two houses. They could prove to be physically violent, to a canvasser, as evidenced by their body language, and the lack of a controlled civil voice.
… if you knowingly and intentionally violate such signs
Two questions come to play here. These two issues and responses are taken from the ACLU of Pennsylvania website1
What is canvassing?
Canvassing is a systematic effort to speak directly to individuals, often by going from home to home. Canvassing is a form of door-to-door solicitation that involves charitable, or non-commercial, solicitors. Canvassing is common in political campaigns, grassroots fundraising, community-awareness efforts, and membership drives. Get-out-the-vote (“GOTV”) efforts, which help people register to vote, encourage voting, and explain how, when and where to vote, are a regularly occurring form of canvassing before major elections.
Do I have to respect a sign in a homeowner’s yard, or on the front door, saying no canvassers or no solicitors?
Yes. The homeowner, or tenant, can decide whether they want people disturbing them. You could be charged with defiant trespass if you knowingly and intentionally violate such signs.
As the cliché states, voting is using one’s own voice. As a canvasser I have a constitutional right of freedom of speech, from the United States of America Constitution to exercise said right by ringing a door bell, or knocking on a door, and speaking with the resident, no matter what party affiliation or cause I may advance. This is more than a constitutional right. Our spiritual voice has a place in our speech too. We can hear the voices of the the Old Testament Prophets as in this instance espoused by Isaiah:
*Ah! Those who enact unjust statutes,
who write oppressive decrees,a
Depriving the needy of judgment,
robbing my people’s poor of justice,
Making widows their plunder,
and orphans their prey!b
What will you do on the day of punishment,
when the storm comes from afar?
To whom will you flee for help?
Where will you leave your wealth,
I am not sure about your thoughts and questions, just the same, I have had these exact thoughts and questions, previously posted in Isaiah’s own blog, written with the prophet’s three verses. I read and hear daily of unjust extreme voter suppression rules enacted and acted on, potential laws trying to retract Supreme Court constitutional precedence, and archaic statutes that long ago should have been repealed. These questions certainly are pertinent in our days. Do those involved in publicizing oppressive decrees consider afterlife? Do the oppressors consider a hereafter, which is not to ask if they believe in an afterlife, only a desire to know if they consider it?
The leaders and financiers of the 1/6 insurrection, as they surface in the news and congressional hearings, as to who did what, when, how, and certainly why, they did what they have done, draws one’s curiosity as it relates to the last questions above.
… canvassing is a Catch 22
Therefore the law of the land states a canvasser has a right to free speech, to exercise that right by knocking on a door, and communicating with a resident. On the other hand, the law of the land allows the resident have a home protected with privacy, enough so to disallow an individual to exercise that right of free speech.
This particular election cycle I have knocked on hundreds of doors. Often I leave the property merely placing a piece of literature, on the door knob. The number of signs where I have seen ‘no soliciting’ or comparable language was infinitesimal. The doors will open even with signage posted. It is not a bother to give the resident the same literature ‘leave behind’. A small few become belligerent, in my estimation needlessly so. There’s no way I could pass judgment as to why the obnoxious are inclined to make such rash and harsh loud decrees, unwanted as they are. Remember, I say to myself, do not run, leave the property immediately.
Canvassing is generally an uplifting happening, meeting one’s neighbors, having heart to heart talks, understanding certain situations one would not know otherwise, and allowing for a political message amicably to be conveyed. It is not suppose to be a trail. Regrettably, canvassing is a Catch 22.
Appropriate words.
The Supreme Court has ruled, the ACLU provides guidance, the national congressional campaign gives operational instruction, and the reality on the ground prevails the individual canvasser as the person to complete the directed act to elevate a political agenda to residents.
Some readers may have been census takers having to go door to door not unlike a canvasser. I understand the census taker has empathy for this message of what the door knocker does. Would you care to share any friendly, or otherwise, encounters, be they by canvassing or census taking?
I will share with you what I do when I canvass.
If I see a ‘no soliciting sign’ it usually very small and non threatening. I have at my finger tips profiles of the individuals I am canvassing. The majority of the time I knock, I talk, then I leave providing a small literature piece. If something on the profile sends a sensory red flag that suggest danger ahead I will continue to the door, make a courtesy knock, tag the door with lit, and move off the property without encounter. All said, in a few instances, an unpleasant facial expression with exacting talk, means the canvasser may need to smile, say have a great day, to the unpleasantness then move on.
As you may have watched in the 1980’s Hill Street Blues NYC policing TV series, the sergeant at the podium addressing his officers with their daily shift brief, concludes each session with the directive “Hey, let’s be careful out there.” Thus we hear a zoetic message ahead of the polling results. Appropriate words.
This message is dedicated to Aria, may she and her eighteen-something friends vote, now to decades into the future, without fear of being suppressed by the oppressors.
Why not place a reminder on the telephone to VOTE at your polling place before closing time today?