Knocking on Doors

I guess you could say our church practices a *little* proselytizing, but not in a traditional sense. We've got a campaign to go door to door to get registered voters to vote. According to the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, who heads the project, the effort to get people to vote in the last election (not the presidential race) resulted in a 30% increase in turnout in our precinct. That's pretty good!

Our goal is to get 500 people in our district to pledge that they'll vote. We're not trying to get new people to register, although that's important too, we're looking at people who have voted in the past. We have a list, thanks to public record and the city, of everyone who is registered, has voted in the past, but did not vote in the election 4 years ago. We go to those houses, knock on the door, talk about voting, and then bring up the ballot questions so they know what they are.

I have to admit, we've got a view on how to vote on the ballot questions this time. I guess the last time they did this it was just to get people to vote, no favoritism. But this time, we want people to vote no on ballot question 1. That means we want people to say NO please don't eliminate the tax on alcohol.

We're not prohibitionists, but we are in favor of drug and alcohol prevention and recovery programs. Right now all of the city's programs are funded by the alcohol tax. If we eliminate the tax we eliminate funding for the programs, which will either close, become grant funded (which is touch and go, let me tell you), or get funded by the state budget (which is already overburdened). Not only will programs be at risk (because of the funding issue) but people likely to abuse alcohol will have easier access to it.

We don't have a stance on question 2 (about affordable housing) or on question 3 (halving the sales tax) although I'm personally opposed to question 3 (education is funded by taxes). I remain unconvinced either way about housing. One side says it's a corrupt law that disregards permitting and leads to environmental harm, the other side says it's the best way to ensure low income housing in a very expensive state.

I've never gone door to door before, but I guess there's always a first. I'll let you know how it goes!