Dinner for Heath Shuler

The Swain County Young Democrats is sponsoring a dinner for Heath Shuler and the Democratic Party on Saturday, September 2nd.



The dinner will be held from 5-8pm at Riverfront Park in Bryson City. Riverfront Park is located at 101 Mitchell Street, next to the Administration Building.

Everyone who is interested in meeting Heath Shuler are invited to attend.

For more information, contact:

William Styles
(828) 736-1413
ws38409@wcu.edu

or

Aaron Morgan
(828) 226-4392
aaronmorgan@yahoo.com

One Stop Voting - A Strategy to Pursue

Summary: One Stop Voting provides a simple and effective way to Get out the Vote

In his hugely popular business book ‘Good to Great’, author Jim Collins studies thousands of companies looking for a few common traits that enable the top performing companies to demonstrate exceptional and continued success over a long period of time. In Good to Great, he names just a few basic principles that all of his ‘success’ companies share.

One of these principles is called the ‘Hedgehog Principle’. Collins argues that a ‘fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’, using the example of a fox attacking a hedgehog. The fox runs around trying multiple strategies, but the hedgehog focuses on what he does best – sticking out his spikes. The hedgehog, over time, almost always wins out.

The point that Collins makes about the Hedgehog principle is that organizations should spend time understanding what it is that is the true key to their success, then completely focus all of their efforts on making that one big thing happen.

Fortunately, in politics, that one big thing is easy. The role of the Swain County Democratic Party in an election year is to get residents of Swain County to cast votes for Democratic candidates.

Everything that does not directly result in a vote being cast for one of our candidates is a sideshow, and takes away time, money and resources away from what is important. What is important is getting a voter to stand in a voting booth and cast a ballot for our candidates.

Voter participation in elections, to put it bluntly, is pathetic. In the recent Swain County Democratic primary, an additional 10-15 voters out of the 80% that didn’t vote could have changed the outcome for several candidates. The importance of Get Out the Vote efforts (GOTV) can not be overstated. All the picnics, handshaking, TV ads, signs in the yards, or ads in the paper are useless if people don’t actually vote.

Lack of participation in elections can be summed up for two reasons:

• Indifference – these people aren’t going to vote regardless of what we do. Ignore them.

• Inconvenience – how often how you heard some say “I was planning on voting, but this or that came up”?

• When you are talking with someone you feel will vote for our candidates, educate them on the One Stop voting program – particular once the voting period has opened.

• Tell the potential voter how they can vote early by simply dropping by the Administration Building in Bryson City.

• Tell them registered voters do not have to give a reason for One Stop Voting.

• Encourge them to vote early, as a way to avoid the lines and the inconvenience of waiting until voting day.

• Every time you see again, ask them if they have cast their ballot early.

Remember, our ‘Hedgehog” is to get votes cast from Democratic Candidates. Do everything you can to make this happen. If you personally got 4-5 voters to vote early that wouldn’t have voted otherwise, you have the ability to change the results of a local election – and don’t forget, the 2000 presidential election came down to 300-400 votes in a single county in Florida.

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