KenInMontiMN
10-23-2008, 05:33 PM
I'm trying to get the word out in MN SD16 re our write-in candidate who got torpedoed by our state GOP leaders shortly in advance of the primary, they spent GOP funds to send out multiple smear literature mailouts against his candidacy just before the primary and he came up short in the GOP primary by just a couple hundred votes and a 54-46 percent margin. He has the endorsement of the local state senate district GOP convention and they even reconvened last week to consider switching that endorsement to the winner of the primary and the locals opted by better than a 3-1 margin to maintain the endorsement for our write-in candidate, to give you an idea how solidly we're stacked against the state brass on this. It's a special election to fill a vacancy for the final two years of a four year term. If we can't win we hope to split the GOP vote enough to have the seat open for his taking in 2010, with no GOP incumbent in place in a normally strongly Republican district.
As any of you who've done phone volunteering know, these days phone work is very frustrating and most people use their machines to screen out calls and simply don't pick up unless they recognize the number/caller these days. So what we're doing, among other things, is sending out a brief one-time letter to voters, with links to his website, through all of the publicly available e-mail addresses we can round up. Thousands of such e-mail addy's are available through school districts, municipalities, county gov't staff directories, etc.
In order to do that without drawing a lot of negative flak, we are employing the courtesy of cross-checking those names against lists of SD16 voter rolls and phone directories to determine those who actually reside in the district, those who definitely don't, and those we're unsure about residence on- in order to avoid spamming out to a lot of people who definitely aren't SD16 voters. That part I'm doing, and its a time consuming job. We also include the courtesy at the bottom of the e-mail of allowing them to reply back and have themselves removed from our mailing lists
If you'd like to help out a bit I could use the following two school district's staff gathered into spreadsheets, all I need is the name in column A and alongside that the e-mail address in column B, the other info there isn't necessary to be added. To get the e-mail address you have to click the name, its on the page that comes up when you click the name- then just right-click the e-mail address and you can copy/paste it directly into the spreadsheet cell. Ideally I'd like the names first name first, last name second, within the same cell, because that's how they appear in the voter rolls and that would allow me to use the spreadsheet search tool instead of scrolling around. But any way you get it into the sheet I can rearrange from there if I need to. You can save me the gathering work and I can concentrate strictly on all of the crosschecking work and the e-mailings. I'm in the middle of finishing up some much larger school districts in the SD right now. I thought there might be more negative responses since these are unsolicited e-mailings, but to my pleasant surprise the numbers coming back requesting removal are less than 2%!, and I've sent well over a thousand already.
Just post in here and claim a portion of the size of your choosing from either of these staff lists as your own, so somebody else doesn't duplicate what you're doing. Specify the school district and the portion of the alphabet you're on top of. When you get the names/e-mail into the spreadsheet, just e-mail me at the address below with your spreadsheet attached. I'm working in excel, .xls, but I can handle any format you use.
So if you've got an hour or two to spare this weekend, I need whatever help I can get between now and Sunday, I'll need all next week for the crosschecking work as I can fit it in, in order to get the last e-mails out by a week from Sunday at the latest. Thanks for considering my request for help!
Milaca school district: http://www.milaca.k12.mn.us/se3bin/clientschool.cgi
Foley school district: http://www.foley.k12.mn.us/se3bin/clientschool.cgi
Ken Anderson
ander151@umn.edu
Edit - I see trying to link the staff directory links (above) directly doesn't work out well, you get a 'website down for service' message, so just click the link for the staff directory on the home pages below
http://www.milaca.k12.mn.us/se3bin/clientschool.cgi?schoolname=school454
http://www.foley.k12.mn.us/se3bin/clientschool.cgi?schoolname=school467
As any of you who've done phone volunteering know, these days phone work is very frustrating and most people use their machines to screen out calls and simply don't pick up unless they recognize the number/caller these days. So what we're doing, among other things, is sending out a brief one-time letter to voters, with links to his website, through all of the publicly available e-mail addresses we can round up. Thousands of such e-mail addy's are available through school districts, municipalities, county gov't staff directories, etc.
In order to do that without drawing a lot of negative flak, we are employing the courtesy of cross-checking those names against lists of SD16 voter rolls and phone directories to determine those who actually reside in the district, those who definitely don't, and those we're unsure about residence on- in order to avoid spamming out to a lot of people who definitely aren't SD16 voters. That part I'm doing, and its a time consuming job. We also include the courtesy at the bottom of the e-mail of allowing them to reply back and have themselves removed from our mailing lists
If you'd like to help out a bit I could use the following two school district's staff gathered into spreadsheets, all I need is the name in column A and alongside that the e-mail address in column B, the other info there isn't necessary to be added. To get the e-mail address you have to click the name, its on the page that comes up when you click the name- then just right-click the e-mail address and you can copy/paste it directly into the spreadsheet cell. Ideally I'd like the names first name first, last name second, within the same cell, because that's how they appear in the voter rolls and that would allow me to use the spreadsheet search tool instead of scrolling around. But any way you get it into the sheet I can rearrange from there if I need to. You can save me the gathering work and I can concentrate strictly on all of the crosschecking work and the e-mailings. I'm in the middle of finishing up some much larger school districts in the SD right now. I thought there might be more negative responses since these are unsolicited e-mailings, but to my pleasant surprise the numbers coming back requesting removal are less than 2%!, and I've sent well over a thousand already.
Just post in here and claim a portion of the size of your choosing from either of these staff lists as your own, so somebody else doesn't duplicate what you're doing. Specify the school district and the portion of the alphabet you're on top of. When you get the names/e-mail into the spreadsheet, just e-mail me at the address below with your spreadsheet attached. I'm working in excel, .xls, but I can handle any format you use.
So if you've got an hour or two to spare this weekend, I need whatever help I can get between now and Sunday, I'll need all next week for the crosschecking work as I can fit it in, in order to get the last e-mails out by a week from Sunday at the latest. Thanks for considering my request for help!
Milaca school district: http://www.milaca.k12.mn.us/se3bin/clientschool.cgi
Foley school district: http://www.foley.k12.mn.us/se3bin/clientschool.cgi
Ken Anderson
ander151@umn.edu
Edit - I see trying to link the staff directory links (above) directly doesn't work out well, you get a 'website down for service' message, so just click the link for the staff directory on the home pages below
http://www.milaca.k12.mn.us/se3bin/clientschool.cgi?schoolname=school454
http://www.foley.k12.mn.us/se3bin/clientschool.cgi?schoolname=school467