The New Republic's Ryan Lizza briefly discusses his 2002 Election Day experience in Sioux Falls following around Republican volunteers conducting the get-out-the-vote effort. Excerpt:
In 2000, I spent Election Day hanging out in Newark, New Jersey with Democrats who specialize in turning out black voters. In 2002, I spent Election Day in Sioux Falls, South Dakota with leaders of the GOP's new get-out-the-vote operation, the 72-Hour Task Force. In Newark, the work was easy. Nine out of ten blacks vote for Democrats, so GOTV targeting was strictly racial. The "flushers" would pour into black neighborhoods and try to get every voter they could find to the polls. In South Dakota, the Republicans I hung out with worked a suburban neighborhood that was a mix of Democrats and Republicans. This meant that months of phones calls and door-knocking researching how the residents would vote had to precede the actual flushing. On Election Day, as they worked the neighborhood, the GOP flushers skipped over the homes that had already been identified as housing Democrats.
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