Jane Taber has truly abandoned any semblance of balanced and fair reporting in the article she wrote on Thursday entitled “Why must Ignatieff cajole by-election volunteers?“. In the article, she suggests that the LPC is somehow having to bribe volunteers in order to get their help.
So let’s take a step back and examine just how idiotic this is.
First: this is a by-election. By-elections are always hard to get volunteers for. There is not the backing of a national campaign to constantly remind people that there is an election happening. There are not national television ads constantly reminding our volunteers that their help is needed. By-elections, despite all of the media rhetoric, are local affairs.
When I worked on the New Westminster-Coquitlam by-election last year, just days before the election many voters didn’t realise there was an election coming up, despite all the election signs plastered all over the riding (that says something about the effectiveness of election signs, btw, but that is for another post). Even if the voters know about the by-election, many of them don’t bother to vote. The New West–Coquitlam by-election only had a 30% voter turnout. By contrast, the same riding had a nearly 60% voter turnout in the 2008 general election (thanks to punditsguide.ca for the data).
The reality is that it is hard to motivate volunteers for by-elections, simply because despite what the national media thinks, the results don’t really matter. Yes, the talking-heads will make wild predictions about the future of the federal parties based on what thirty percent of voters say in one riding, but it’s not like the LPC winning or losing Vaughan is going to change the balance of power in the House. How can you truly expect the average party member to take time away from their day-to-day lives to help with something that doesn’t really change anything?
Second: based on the article, I would expect that this was an effort to get people in Ottawa to use the LPC’s Virtual Phone Bank system to help make calls. Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever made phone calls from home for political purposes, but it can be a fairly daunting and intimidating task. You are calling people who don’t want to be called; people who are very often rude and dismissive. You don’t have the benefit of a room full of people doing the same task to help keep you motivated. It can be very demoralising. Offering incentives to help volunteers push through these negatives is just good volunteer management.
I should also mention that the Party did not have the Virtual Phone Bank system during the last general election, so many of the volunteers don’t even know it exists. Offering people incentives to use the new system is good advertising for this tool that will be widely used during the next general election.
Third: Every campaign does something to recognize its top volunteers: recognition dinners, gift certificates, free food while volunteering, etc. Making volunteers feel appreciated for the work they do is the best way to ensure that they will volunteer again!
Fourth: The reporting is just bad. Does anyone really believe that the Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition is involved in any way in volunteer recruitment programs? I mean, really?
Where is the balance? Did Ms. Taber look into what volunteer recruitment strategies the other parties where doing in the by-elections? No. She obviously got forwarded an email, talked to a couple of “party insiders” who refused to go on the record, and then wrote this trash. That isn’t, in my mind, good journalism.
With this article (the second to mention the volunteer recruitment strategy this week), Ms. Taber seems determined to try to convince Canadians that there is something nefarious in recognizing and rewarding good volunteers on an election campaign. She is so desperate to find issues to make her column interesting that she tries to create scandals where none exist. I can only hope that her readers are more intelligent than she gives them credit for.
