34 Time August 17/August 24, 2020
Politics
more than infomercials. But they serve as a major
engine of the parties’ fundraising—another opera-
tion that’s moved online in the age of coronavirus.
The swanky catered affairs that donors once paid
tens of thousands of dollars per plate to attend are
now BYOB livestreams. Campaigns have had to
get creative as the novelty fades. “When the stay-
at-home orders started, campaigns immediately
started doing virtual events—a Zoom fundraiser,
a field- organizer hangout,” says Brian Krebs, who
works at a Democratic digital- campaign firm called
Rising Tide Interactive. “But the bar is rising now
that a lot of people are Zoomed out. You’ve got to
have a special guest or some kind of hook. People
aren’t going to show up if it’s just 12 squares talking.”
On the other hand, celebrity guests can be easier to
land when they can appear at your fundraiser with-
out leaving L.A. The Texas Democratic Senate nomi-
nee MJ Hegar recently recorded an event with the
cast of Supernatural and New Jersey Senator Cory
Booker, none of whom set foot in Texas. Hegar cam-
paign volunteers have also gotten creative with their
outreach, holding a voter- registration texting ses-
sion that doubled as a Taylor Swift listening party.
Around this time in an election, campaigns tra-
ditionally shift from registering, identifying and
persuading voters to pushing them to the polls.
The GOP is still doing so, knocking on a million
doors a week, the Republican National Committee
claims. But on the left, an intense debate has broken
out about the ethics of going door-to-door amid a
plague. Research suggests that in-person conversa-
tions with voters are the most effective way to get
them to turn out. But most liberal groups and the
Biden campaign aren’t planning on door knocking
this year, viewing it as too risky for workers and vot-
ers alike. One group that forged ahead, the Progres-
sive Turnout Project, had to suspend its operations in a dozen states after
several employees tested positive for COVID-19.
The irony is more Americans are eager for political engagement this
year. In a Fox News poll in July, 85% said they were extremely or very mo-
tivated to vote, and the percentage of respondents who told Gallup they
were more enthusiastic than usual about voting was up 10 points from
- Despite the difficulties of pandemic voting, primaries in states such
as Texas and Georgia have set turnout records. At the same time, new voter
registrations have plummeted because of the closure of government of-
fices like departments of motor vehicles.
In Pinal County, Arizona, a small progressive organization called Rural
Arizona Engagement had gotten only a quarter of the way to its voter-
registration goal when it had to stop canvassing in March. Attempts to
continue the work by phone were mostly unsuccessful. Even though Ari-
zona is currently a coronavirus hot spot, the group hopes to go back into the
field to turn out the vote. “We feel like if we can follow [Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention] guidelines and train our staff in a way that protects
them and the people we’re talking to, this is a year that requires this work
to be done,” says the group’s co–executive director Natali Fierros Bock.
The pandemic, she says, has heightened people’s
awareness of why their vote matters. (It’s also in-
creased canvassers’ success rate: with so many people
isolated in their homes, more are willing to answer
the door and talk with a stranger.) Despite robust
public support for wearing masks, the Pinal County
board of supervisors decided against a mask man-
date for businesses, and the rabble-rousing county
sheriff, Mark Lamb, announced he would not enforce
the state’s stay-at-home order. (Lamb was forced
to cancel a planned appearance with Trump at the
White House when he was diagnosed with COVID-
19 in June.) “People are starting to connect the dots,”
Fierros Bock says, “and consider who is serving in
these local offices and how much power they wield.”the pAndemic lAnded in the midst of America’s
primary- election season, forcing state election offi-
cials to adapt on the fly. The results offer a glimpse
of the massive challenges the general election will
pose—and the disasters that could ensue.
One of the first test runs came in Ohio, whose pri-
mary was scheduled for March 17, just days after the
World Health Organization declared a global pan-
demic, the NBA abruptly suspended its season and
states across the country began rapidly shutting^
Trump
supporters
at his rally in
Tulsa, Okla.,
on June 20