Your area managers may show so much talent that they will crowd you and inspire you into better work yourself; however some of them will simply be message points, persons you can telephone and who in turn will telephone their several workers or whom you can call on to pick up campaign material from the headquarters for redistribution to the individual workers. In either case the area supervisor must be a person who works in at least one precinct. Otherwise he does not know the field problems and will botch things for you.
But there is another reason why everyone from the candidate up through the whole organization to the single precinct worker should do canvassing: The U.S. Army, shortly before World War II, added some 30% to its fire power by arming with rifles or carbines all of the non-coms and officers up to major. The same result is obtainable in a campaign organization - I have seen more than one campaign in which there were so many supervisory jobs, special jobs, and headquarters jobs that there were no doorbell pushers; then they wondered why they lost!
This is a complete reversal of opinion on my part, brought on by experience. In my first campaign I used to quote Poor Richard: "The overseer's eyes are worth more than his hands." In politics it should be rephrased, "The overseer's example is worth more than his precept-and it opens his eyes wider and gets votes in the bargain!"
Your publicity man should ring some doorbells in the district to sample the flavor - but he probably won't, whether he is paid or unpaid. Still... he can't shoot you for suggesting it.
If your office girl pushes a few doorbells in the evening she will understand the campaign better, but you will be happy enough if she has a civil tongue, a tight lip, and an ability to not lose track of the details.
Haw to Get a Selected List frim which to Punch Doorbells: Your district has 320,000 residents lodged behind some 100,000 private doorways. It is most unlikely that you will have enough people to punch every doorbell. However there are only 70,000 members of our party
in the district and only 25,000 of these may be expected to vote in the primary. They live in some 15,000 separate homes (this is based on statistical examination and is not a casual speculation). The problem is beginning to be cut down to your size; if you know which 15,000 doorbells in your district, 100 precinct workers plus one tireless candidate plus one manager could ring every doorbell.
Fortunately there are ways to determine with reasonable exactness which doorbells are worth ringing.
The adults in the United States fall into three groups, those who vote in primaries, those who vote in general elections, and those who don't vote at all. (The membership of the groups and the ratios between them vary slightly if city elections are considered rather than elections for state and national offices; this need not concern us at the moment as the principle is unchanged.)
The key to the matter is that these groups, though fuzzy around the edges, remain very largely the same from year to year, i.e., the citizens who vote in any one primary are almost certain to vote in every primary, circumstances permitting.
In many or most states it is customary to post outside the polls a roster of the registered voters with a check mark to show whether or not each person voted and to leave this record published for about a week after each primary or election. It is then possible to obtain the basic list you need by copying data from these lists. This is tedious and piecemeal; there is usually a better way. All states (I believe) require a voter to "sign the book." These books are returned to the registrar of voters, the city clerk, or other official charged with the custody of election records. There they remain for a period of time, depending on local law or custom, as they may be required as evidence.
You are probably entitled by your state laws to examine these records. Whether you are or not, the way to get the use of them is to find out where they are, who has the power to let you see them, and apply to that person, a smile on your face and friendliness in your voice, for permission to see them. Ask it as a favor, not a right
Two persons, one reading the signatures and the other making check marks on precinct lines, can get the basic list of the primary voters in a political party by this method for an entire congressional district in two to four days. The results are then transferred to alphabetical files, precinct files, and elsewhere as needed. This work needs to be done before the campaign opens and is one of the many reasons why campaigns are won between elections, not during the public campaign season.
You will need precinct lists of course. You need three or four sets of precinct lists for your entire district; such sets may be rather expensive. It is often possible to obtain free sets from the same official who let you see the election books. Otherwise you must purchase them from the contract printer.
Usually the simplest way to get anything is to find out who has it, then go directly to that person and ask him, in a pleasant tone of voice, to give it to you-free. This applies in all fields with all things, from a match to a million-dollar endowment, but it is unusually important in politics. If you use this rule you may miss on free precinct lists but you will make it up on free hall rent, free newspaper advertising, free printing, or free signboards.
When you have your basic list of persons who vote in your primary, the candidate and each precinct worker will work from it The candidate will use no other; the precinct workers will call first on the persons listed-about thirty evenings of work for each under our assumptions-and will call on others only if they have time for it.
The precinct worker is constantly revising his card file as he works, throwing away cards of persons who have moved and adding the newcomers, as he discovers them. In addition to newcomers discovered through his calls he should make an effort to find it out when persons move into the neighborhood. The postman could give him this information quite accurately but the postal regulations are a little stuffy about employees giving out data about people. Instead he can cultivate the neighborhood cop, the milkman, and the boys who deliver newspapers and groceries. Real estate offices and moving and storage concerns can be made sources of these vital statistics. A precinct worker who is on the job can, without very much effort at any one time, know quite accurately what vote is to be expected in his primary, how it may be expected to go, what individuals by name may be counted on to vote for your man, which ones of these will get to the polls under their own power, and what ones must be carried.
The handful of cards you hand him to start with, made up from the election books, make him the equal of almost any professional ward heeler, right from scratch. You have cut it down to the size a part-time volunteer can handle.
A volunteer organization is bound to be spotty; some precincts will have no volunteers. Don't try to transfer workers from other precincts, except on election day. Let the candidate work the precincts that have no workers, concentrating on the more densely populated. He will get more votes than a precinct worker could out of the same number of calls and he stands the best chance of turning up new workers. On election day regroup and bring in the votes he has cinched, even if it means spreading your forces very thin.
Don't expect a volunteer organization to make blanket distribution of political literature as the time used can be turned to better account making calls. If you decide that you can afford the shot-gun method of blanket coverage, use paid professionals. Sometimes a tie-in can be made with some other distribution such as a community newspaper or an advertising throw-away at a very low cost.