Postcards to Voters with Tony the Democrat

Disclaimer: Unedited AI Transcript

Larry (00:07):

You are listening to specifically for Seniors, a podcast designed for a vibrant and diverse senior community. I'm your host, Dr. Larry Barsh.

New Speaker (00:18):

. Join me in a lineup of experts as we discuss a wide variety of topics that will empower, inform, entertain, and inspire as we celebrate the richness and wisdom of this incredible stage of life.

Larry (00:39):

Welcome to everyone. To specifically for seniors. I'm your host, Dr. Larry Barsh. Today we're absolutely delighted to have Tony McMullen with us. Tony is affectionately known as Tony the Democrat, and his story is going to energize and inspire you. Back in March, 2017, Tony invited five friends over to hand write postcards reminding voters about an important election, just five friends, five postcards each. But within one month, that tiny gathering had sparked a nationwide movement of 1200 volunteers writing more than 51,000 postcards. Today, postcards to voters has grown to more than 162,000 volunteers across all 50 states who've written more than an astounding 22 million postcards for critical elections. Here's what makes this so special. These are not form letters or computed printer printed mailings. Every single postcard is handwritten, personally decorated and mailed by volunteers who wanna make a real difference and it works. Candidates have won by margins as slim as 95 votes after receiving Tony's postcard support. Even better. Tony tells us that the community building volunteers, meeting up, forming friendships, finding purpose has been the most beautiful unintended gift of this whole adventure. Tony, we're delighted to have you here on specifically for seniors.

Tony The Democrat (02:44):

Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really enjoy listening to some of your recent in preparation for this and look forward to answering your questions and, and helping your audience.

Larry (02:56):

Let's get started talking about this, five friends and five postcards. Can you take us back to that start?

Tony The Democrat (03:05):

I can, Larry, and I hope you'll forgive me for offering a, a, a, an important but minor clarification. It, it wasn't five friends that was five complete strangers that I met on Facebook because they were in a, a group called Postcards for America, which was founded right after Trump was elected. And they were writing postcards to elected officials and sometimes to company CEOs trying to influence their actions. And they were talking about the special election in the district in Georgia where I happened to live that was having its first Congressional special election in Trump's first term. You and your listeners may recall that John Ossoff ran in that special congressional election and I, I wanted to do my part to boost turnout and awareness of a special election that was gonna be, I think at the time, I think it was gonna be in April something like that.

Tony The Democrat (04:16):

And so I, I reached out to that group and just said, Hey, I've got some addresses for terrific Democrats in that district where John Ossoff is running. If you'd like to write, just send me a message and I'll give you five addresses and the script, and then just send me a picture back so that I know that you did it. And five complete strangers reached out to me. I gave them each five addresses. They sent me their completed photo, you know, their completed postcard photo, and some of them asked for more addresses and, and a couple asked if they could tell their friends or mention it at the, an upcoming Democratic Club meeting. And I said, sure. How bad could it get <laugh>? You know, I didn't know what what we were in store for, to be honest, but I think that we can all recall the feelings that we had when Trump was elected and started hearing things coming out of the administration.

Tony The Democrat (05:12):

And it, it really turned out to be the case that a lot of folks wanted to do something. And for many people writing postcards was the at-home activism that they could easily fit into their schedule. That was a, a low threshold for, for getting involved for the first time for many of them in any kind of political campaign activities. And as you said, here we are now nearly nine years later, we have a couple of updates to your, your numbers that you mentioned at the top of the meeting. We have over 180,000 volunteers. We've written and mailed over 26 million postcards. And this is in support of over 500 named Democratic candidates up and down the ballot from US Senator down to Tax assessor collector. We, we have written for almost every elected office type. There is,

Larry (06:13):

I tried to find the most recent numbers, but I guess this movement is really growing.

Tony The Democrat (06:20):

It continues to grow. In fact, just yesterday we added 58 new writers. So every day there are people who are learning about us. Our existing writers are telling their friends. Campaigns are mentioning that we're available as an option if, if those volunteers don't want to phone bank or go door to door. And so the campaigns will send them in our direction. So we're still growing even after the November elections when most people would think, okay, well, I've got some time to kick back and not do anything for a little while. Every month there's an election somewhere, and often there's more than one election. And so we're still assigning people up on a daily basis. And I hope that some of your listeners will decide by the end of the our, our session here that they'd like to give it a try and, and send an email to join@tonythedemocrat.org.

Larry (07:18):

You mentioned that originally the postcards were going to members of Congress, but your approach is more personal.

Tony The Democrat (07:27):

So when I started postcards to voters with that very first campaign in Georgia we wrote to voters. That was the whole point. It was writing to Democrats to help strengthen the habit of voting. I and a lot of other folks who work with campaigns, and especially when we evaluate the outcome after the election, and we look at what could have been done differently. You know, if we lost, how many additional Democrats would it have taken? And you study the numbers and, and every time my takeaway was we had enough Democrats that we could have flipped that seat or, or defended that democratic incumbent, but not enough of those voters showed up. And my focus really has been about reaching out to our voters and giving them these friendly reminders because they just need that, that, that extra note to vote. So many of them are, are busy.

Tony The Democrat (08:33):

Either they have children or they're working two jobs. You know, life just just has a way of taking over. And not everybody is as plugged in as you and and your listeners to know, oh, there's a special runoff election for county commissioner or what have you, and they're may be only voting every four years or maybe every two years. We need our voters to develop the habit of voting that's as strong as yours and mine, because when more of us vote, even in these down ballot sort of sleepy elections that are not necessarily in November, when more of us show up the campaign consultants and the candidates, they notice 'cause they're studying election turnout numbers like, like you wouldn't believe. They're looking at these to try to figure out what positions they should be taking and how responsive they should be, and what policy priorities they should be championing on their stump speech and their, and their website. And so it really matters, even when you think, oh, well, goodness, Tony, it's just a school board race. I mean, how big of a deal could that be? Well, you don't know if that Republican school board candidate might one day run for state rep and then one day run for Congress. We need our Democratic candidates to be filling every spot in these elected offices because we all know that our, you know, our priorities, our core principles, those are the things that are worth championing at every level of government.

Larry (10:13):

And I just wanted to emphasize that these are personal postcards. These are handwritten personal two voters.

Tony The Democrat (10:27):

Exactly. Exactly. That's, that's one of the things that makes this a, a, a low tech, but a high touch outreach method, yes, it takes more time. I remember <laugh>, it's every so often somebody will volunteer and they'll say, gosh, I could probably 200 do 200 of these postcards if you only let me print them on my machine. And then we say, no, please don't do that. First of all, it can lead to all kinds of violations of campaign and election finance laws when you mach, you know, print or produce these postcards by machine. Because there are actual rules governing the, the mass mailing of election you know, information. So no, please hand write them, and it's okay if you can't hand write 200 postcards. We're, we're not expecting you to just do the five or the 10, however many you feel comfortable and your hands feel comfortable writing because we're all in this together.

Tony The Democrat (11:34):

There are huge numbers of us, and no individual volunteer needs to be burdened or stressed out trying to overdo it. Just do your, your part the best that you can and trust that everybody else is doing the same thing. We are so fortunate with the number, number of volunteers that we have that we're able to complete the list that we receive even for congressional races. Now, statewide races, that's a lot more challenging. It's very difficult to complete an entire statewide list. But fortunately in those races, the campaigns are, are quite savvy. And they've had, they have ways to target their voter outreach so that when they give us a list for a statewide campaign, they, they know that those are the voters they need to win. And we're not gonna blanket the entire state of Democrats because it just wouldn't be effective. And, and we wanna make sure that our volunteers are only doing what's prudent and effective to, to move the needle on election day.

Larry (12:46):

So we keep mentioning volunteers. How does somebody volunteer and what's the process?

Tony The Democrat (12:54):

The very first thing is to send an email to us and our email address, I know you're gonna put it in the show notes, but it's join@tonythedemocrat.org, that's JOIN, Tony, TONY the democrat.org. And you'll immediately receive an auto reply from the system showing you the three required message items, the three sentences basically, that you'll want to write on either a, a piece of paper, or if you have postcards, read it on a postcard, take a picture of that, and then email it to us. This is our way, first of all, to assess the legibility of the handwriting for all of our volunteers. It wouldn't make any sense to, to, to take the time to spend the money on postage and, and mail a postcard if the handwriting is difficult to read. Right? That, that, that wouldn't serve any good purpose. So we tell the campaigns, this is part of our volunteer onboarding or vetting process.

Tony The Democrat (13:59):

And, and, and that's the first thing. But the second reason we ask you to send us a sample photo of your postcard is that we wanna see how well you follow simple instructions, right, Larry? You would be surprised, even though it's, it's really simple. Write these three sentences on a postcard. There are some times people that don't quite follow the instructions. Well, the first time. And since we're not gonna be looking over their shoulders as they continue to write, if they join us, we really need some minor method to check and, and, and see that, that they can follow the instructions and we give them coaching. If something's missing or if maybe they added some kind of wording about Trump or whatever, that's not really quite appropriate, we'll give them that feedback and invite them to send us a new sample. And it's just a way for them to demonstrate that they're taking this seriously, that they're going to be a, a careful writer for us, and then we have the confidence to approve them and they're off to the mailboxes.

Larry (15:10):

What is the address again that they send the sample back?

Tony The Democrat (15:16):

It's the same address, the same email address. Join@Tonythedemocrat.Org. They can also just hit reply. Remember, they're gonna get an email response from us, and they can just hit reply to that email and attach the photo of their sample postcard.

Larry (15:34):

Okay. Now say they're accepted. What happens?

Tony The Democrat (15:42):

So not everybody who joins already has postcards ready to write immediately. If the volunteer, the new volunteer tells us that they, they, they, it, you know, it'll take them a little while to get the postcards or the postage stamps. We just invite them to email us when they're ready. Or they can reach out to Abby, the address bot on the website or on our Slack channel that is a, an automated 24 hour seven day a week robot, basically, that will help approved writers get addresses when they select from one of the active campaigns on that particular day. If you already have postcards, which many people do by now because they've been writing maybe for some other groups, or maybe their friend that told them about us, gave them some postcards, then they just tell us how many postcards they are confident that they have the time and the supplies on hand to write and mail within three days.

Tony The Democrat (16:46):

And that's, that's a key part. I hope that your listeners will, will, will hear that. We only want you to, to look ahead three days to know what your own personal schedule is, to know what supplies you have on hand. And, and you tell us, do you want four addresses to finish within three days? Or would you like 20 addresses to finish within three days? The idea of having that three day window is, is, is, is has many purposes. And, and Larry, please, you know, nod or wave at me or something if I, if you feel like I'm going into too much detail on this, but I think that the three day window really makes what, what we're organizing here, just that much more easy for folks because we're not gonna require you to write 200 postcards in, in a month. You write as many or as few as you think you can handle every three days.

Tony The Democrat (17:54):

And if you run out of those addresses, let's say you finish them earlier than you expected, you can ask for more addresses immediately, you know, or whenever you want, whenever you're ready. This is just a way for the writers to have less stress, to not be worrying so much, oh, did I bite off more than I could chew? Or, gosh, what if something comes up in their life and now they don't have the time? Keeping that number so manageable and totally in your control, I think is what makes, it's part of what really makes your participation in postcards to voters fun for you and not seem like a chore.

Larry (18:40):

Okay. A couple of things. You mentioned a bot that you write to, to get addresses.

Tony The Democrat (18:48):

Yes.

Larry (18:50):

Tell me, tell me precisely what that's about.

Tony The Democrat (18:55):

Okay. So it became very clear after the first campaign with 1200 volunteers emailing me personally for addresses five addresses or 10 addresses a day, I was not gonna be able to scale this operation if, if it was just left up to me. And what ended up turning out very lucky for me that we had five different people. It just happens to be another set of five, but it was five different volunteers that started to help me manually copy and paste addresses during that first campaign. We weren't gonna be able to keep that up. I mean, everybody has jobs and, and, and, you know, technology being what it is. I was fortunate to run into somebody at a a, a meetup, a democratic club meetup. And his full-time job happened to be in developing interactive texting applications for businesses. And a light bulb went off in my head and I thought, gee, I wonder if we could use that same technology to assign addresses.

Tony The Democrat (20:03):

And so we did that for a number of years. We used ADI address bot as a texting you know, on a texting platform, sort of like when you see a commercial and it says text 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for your 20% discount on pizza, or whatever the case might be. I think by now a lot of us are familiar with these interactive texting programs from businesses. Well, Carl was able to work his magic to create Abby, the address bot for us, which meant approve volunteers could get addresses at three in the morning if that's when they were awake to write addresses. And it didn't require one of us human volunteers to assist them. They could get all their needs met immediately via text. I will let you know that a couple years ago, the American cellular companies decided to crack down on text spamming, and they changed the rules, which meant that we were no longer able to send more than 5,000 texts a day, every 24 hours.

Tony The Democrat (21:16):

And that really was not going to work for us. So we had to move from the texting platform to slack, which is a messaging application that many people know. Abby, the address bot also has her own email address that she replies to automatically. And we now thanks to another volunteer on the tech side for a little over a year. We've had Abby on our webpage. So in these different ways, we're trying to make it as easy as possible for people to get addresses without having to wait on another human volunteer to respond to an email.

Larry (21:58):

And who are the addresses? How do people get their names on, on the bot?

Tony The Democrat (22:07):

So Abby, the address bot will recognize the email address of the volunteer writer because if they've been approved, then that will be in a database or a list that Abby is able to access. If you try to reach Abby and you haven't been approved yet, she'll realize that I don't, you know, she doesn't recognize that email address, and then she'll direct you to email us to join. Okay.

Larry (22:38):

Okay. And who are the people that are accessible on the bot?

Tony The Democrat (22:45):

Whatever, <crosstalk>. In other

Larry (22:45):

Words, are these, are these Democrats who say, I want to be I I want to be sent postcards, or,

Tony The Democrat (22:55):

Well, there isn't any sort of a facility at, you know, nationwide where Democratic registered voters volunteer to receive election mail. That's not, that's not how that works. But if you are registered to vote and we're able to tell that you're a Democrat or Democratic leaning and I say we, I, I mean the campaigns, 'cause that's who gives us the voter addresses that they have identified as being essential to prevailing on election night. So the campaigns give us those addresses, and then we load them into our system that Abby is able to pull from. When you ask for five addresses, she picks the first five addresses that have not yet been assigned already. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And so it goes,

Larry (23:54):

Okay. Now the second part of the question was, you mentioned someone has or does not have postcards. Are these blank postcards? Are they pictured on one side? Are they available And where <laugh>

Tony The Democrat (24:14):

Well, that's a great question, Larry, and, and I know a lot of people have that same question, so I'm happy to explain. When we started, obviously this was a brand new thing, and so we just told people, use any kind of postcard as long as it is benign or neutral. We don't want voters to receive provocative postcards or controversial, you know, postcards. The postcard needs to be friendly, fun. It could be a blank one if that's what you have. You can go to the post office. They sell pre-stamped postcards where the postage is already a part of the postcard that they're, they're gonna hand you in a packet. But now, and actually shortly after we started and things, the numbers, you know, started climbing and people realize this is a, this is going to be an ongoing thing. People started creating postcards and offering them for sale on Amazon or Etsy.

Tony The Democrat (25:21):

And it, it sort of developed a cottage industry of really talented designers, graphic designers that were illustrating or creating on their PCs really beautiful and flexible, versatile designs that were either patriotic or some of them were whimsical, but all of them were perfectly acceptable to be used for elections, large and small. Right? It could be a city council race, it could be a state legislative race. The idea of course, is that the postcard email, it should be sturdy enough to withstand those automated post office mail sorting, you know, machines. And it should be something that the, the voter wants to hold and, and, and hang on to flip it over to read it. We don't want the postcards to look like campaign mail. That's the important thing. If you're spending the time and the postage to send these postcards to voters, you want them to read the postcard.

Tony The Democrat (26:30):

And so they should not include campaign logos. It shouldn't include a photo of the candidate. It should really look just like something a regular person would mail to a friend, right? And so that's, that's I think what really helps the, the delivery and the receipt succeed. Because the, the recipient is going to go through their stack of mail, right? Bill, bill, junk mail bill. Oh, wait, what's this? It's a handwritten postcard. Where did this come from? You know, honey, who do we know in, in you know, Washington or Maryland or whatever? And then because the message is so short, it doesn't take long for them to read it. It's not in an envelope where they have to be suspicious, perhaps what kind of junk mail might this be? I don't recognize that return address. I'm not gonna open it. So it's like an open face sandwich, right? You already know what's in it. It's very easy to read the reminder to vote and the name of the candidate. And then that's, that's the job.

Larry (27:39):

All right? Track records. How well have you been doing?

Tony The Democrat (27:45):

You know, I tell people, and some of your listeners may have seen some of my emails before, if they're part of our group where I say basically that every campaign we write for is a success. Because at the very basic, you know, level, the metric is, are we doing our job to help strengthen the habit of voting among Democrats? And by completing our mission and sending those postcards to the designated democratic voters in that election, we've done our job, we've succeeded. The, the post carding is just one element of a comprehensive get out the vote plan that is up to the campaign to pull off. We're not involved in any of those other get out the vote, you know, planning decisions or the execution of the door knocking or any of that other stuff. And frankly, sometimes we're writing for a candidate that may be the first quality candidate to run for that office in quite a while.

Tony The Democrat (28:52):

It's not realistic to expect that we're going to flip or win every single contest that we agree to, to get involved in. But it's also important to note that if we don't help that candidate who's taken time out of their professional life, out of their family life to run, if we don't help them now, then, then how are we ever going to flip that district or that seat? Some of these races, you have to, you have to put the time in, even though you know, the odds are against you, because maybe in two years, the same candidate or another candidate will run. Sometimes it takes multiple cycles to correct the neglect that the party might be responsible for in that district by just ignoring them or just saying, oh my gosh, it's turned red. We're not gonna do anything here anymore. We're, we don't have the time to invest.

Tony The Democrat (29:51):

We don't have the volunteers or the, the money to do the job necessary. And so they, they just stop recruiting candidates, quality candidates, and what do you think is gonna happen? So I, I know that it might sound like I'm trying to skirt the question, and I'm really not. It's that I have to recognize we're, we're not measuring, we're not trying to measure our success simply by the number of wins that the candidates we've written for have garnered. Right? Clearly, that's a fantastic outcome. And then that's really what we all want. We, we, we're not doing this just just to exercise our, our, our handwriting or penmanship. We want to win, but sometimes we're not going to, and I don't want folks to think that the percentage of wins versus losses is the end all to decide if postcard is still a viable, worthwhile activity. Anyway, I, I, I hope that gives some context to what you were aiming for. But

Larry (31:09):

Let's name some names. Karen Gatis in Oklahoma, 95 votes.

Tony The Democrat (31:16):

Yep.

Larry (31:18):

So Phil Miller and I, Iowa, Kevin Kavanaugh.

Tony The Democrat (31:23):

Yes. I just got goosebumps. Those, those, those were some sweet victories. Each of them were in red races. Places were on paper at any other time, any analyst, anybody who knew what the history of voting was in those areas, they would've put money that the Republican was going to win. And yet the Democrats running in those places won instead. And as you mentioned, Karen Gatis, she was our fourth candidate ever. And she won, I think you said by 95 votes. It's a very low turnout special election for state legislature. And she was a 40 year retired public school educator. What a fantastic person to send to the state legislature, especially in Oklahoma, where they were struggling every single budget year with trying to prioritize the funding of public schools. And so having her as a voice in those meetings was of paramount importance.

Tony The Democrat (32:30):

And Phil Miller he was a veterinarian <laugh>. I remember people telling me that they were so surprised at the postcards that were coming in from all over the country. In fact, that was the campaign where we were coordinating with the state Democratic Caucus Committee. We weren't coordinating directly with Phil Miller and his team. We were working with the caucus committee. And so the campaign volunteers in the campaign office, they didn't know that postcards were being sent until some of them started receiving postcards themselves. And, and other voters say, Hey, how did you guys manage to pull off this postcard thing? And they didn't know, because they weren't familiar yet with what our work was. They started taping the postcards to the front window of that storefront campaign office until the window became full, and then they started putting them on one of the interior walls. And of course, you know, Phil ended up winning that special election. But it just, it just goes to show the, the attention that these handwritten, fun and friendly messages can have, even in the reddest of places, because there are Democrats everywhere. What we need to do, and what we're working to do is to help those Democrats vote more often. And, and I I think that we've, we're, we're achieving that.

Larry (34:03):

Kevin Kavanaugh, New Hampshire, another one that won by less than a thousand votes.

Tony The Democrat (34:10):

Yep. Yep. Exactly. And you've got and even

Larry (34:15):

Ones you lost.

Tony The Democrat (34:19):

You're right, Larry, even ones we've lost Cecil Webster was a candidate that comes to mind. He was running in a special election in Texas for the state legislature. Now, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but at the time, it was something like an 85% or higher red district. So we're talking about, you know, a, a a a challenge that was just probably insurmountable, but it was a may election or something. It was something where we didn't have anything else going on. So we had the capacity. And I used to live in Texas, so I checked in with a lot of my Texas Democratic friends to, to ask, well, who is this guy? Is he running a serious campaign? 'cause I don't wanna waste our volunteers time if we've just got some perennial candidate running in a super red district, and they're not even mounting a serious effort.

Tony The Democrat (35:20):

You know, we, we, we need to respect the time and po postage of our volunteers and really just, you know, make sure that we're not what do you want to call it? Just being peripheral us And, and the campaign's not pulling their weight. But everybody told me that this veteran, this attorney, this African American Democratic candidate, if he was running almost in any other place in Texas, he would win. But he just happened to live in a ruby red District, and there was no chance he was gonna win. Well, we wrote for him anyway, right? In fact, we wrote his entire list one full time, and then we wrote a quarter of it a second time before we ran out of, of time on the calendar to mail them safely. And he did not win just as expected. But a few, maybe a few days after the election, I received an email from somebody who identified herself as a resident of Cecil's District.

Tony The Democrat (36:25):

And she tells me in the email that she's a member of a secret Democratic women's club. And it's a secret because they're worried. The members are worried that if their neighbors and their employers and their customers found out that they were Democrats, that they might not get, they might not get business, they might lose their job. They might, you know, be blackballed. And so they, she wouldn't even tell me the name of the club out of worry that somebody could figure out, you know, who the members were or where they were meeting or whatever. But here's the, here's the part that really touched me, and I, and I rem it's been years, but I still remember she says that, that everybody in her club received a postcard. And they were so touched that these volunteers from across the country, even though we had to have known Cecil, had no chance of winning, that we wrote to them anyway, they voted in their club to write a thousand postcards at their monthly meetings for whatever candidate was active at the time with us.

Tony The Democrat (37:41):

And I mean, just what a touching and unexpected outcome. Even though Cecil didn't win these everyday voters, just like your listeners, they saw the power of those postcards in their own mailboxes and the organic conversations that they, they, they generated between neighbors and friends talking about a candidate, because some volunteer wrote them a postcard about it. And, and that's the thing that happens with every campaign we do. Even though we might not get an email every campaign from somebody in a democratic club doing what they decided to do, we know that it's working. And I, and I, and I, I can't think of a, of a time that something like that happened with phone banking, let's say, for example, you know, you just, you just, there's something about holding that postcard that somebody's handwritten that just affects you differently than some of those other traditional voter outreach methods.

Larry (38:50):

And that's part of the community building that we mentioned in the introduction, as in, you're right, unintended consequence.

Tony The Democrat (39:02):

You're right, you're right. You know people get inspired. People see post carding as, as a, as a relatively easy thing for them to do. And some of those folks then invited their friends to write with them. And, and some now have large groups of volunteer writers who look to them as sort of like a community organizer or a, a neighborhood leader in politics. And I'm sure those writers never set out to, to be in that role. But because postcard is so easy, it's, it's, it's, it's not hard at all to convince people to follow your example and write just five. You don't have to write a lot. If you got five people and they're each writing five plus your five, well, that's 30 postcards, you know, before you know it. And the thing about postcards, I guess it's almost like with potato chips. I can't remember what the potato chip brand used to have a commercial where you can't just eat one, but for good or for worse, when you start writing, you develop a knack for it, almost always. And you can't stop at just five. And so I think that's where the, the, the, the, the sort of, the, the secret is, is that even though we tell people you only have to write five, we know that most people are gonna enjoy it so much that they'll write much more than five.

Larry (40:32):

Okay. We're looking forward to the 2026 midterms as a bigger selection of candidates for higher offices. How do you choose which races to support?

Tony The Democrat (40:59):

All right, well, I'm gonna try to answer in, in, in, in shorter <laugh> give you shorter answers. 'cause I, I, I worry that I've gone on a little bit too long, but you're, you're welcome to edit this any way you like to, to for, for, for length of time. But when it comes to November elections, which the midterms are, and we're talking about every single seat in Congress going up for election or reelection it's, it's not an easy task. First of all, we're not a Pac, we're not a 5 0 1 C anything. We're, we're, we are casually organized volunteers that are unreimbursed for our efforts. And so it's not like I have a huge team of researchers that are, you know, reading up on every single race in the country and trying to score them and this and that and the other. So the first thing really is does the campaign want our help? We have a, a webpage where campaigns and candidates fill out a short questionnaire to let us know that they're interested in our volunteer help. It starts there. They have to tell us that they want our handwritten postcards from there, then it's a matter, especially in the November elections, which is what you're asking about, it's a matter of, of trying to estimate our writing capacity. How many volunteers have been engaged with us recently?

Tony The Democrat (42:32):

You know, even though I told you we have over 180,000 that have signed up over the ni nearly nine years, that doesn't mean they're all still writing with us. Some of them get involved because of a big splashy name, you know, maybe a Stacey Abrams or Bedo O'Rourke, or maybe there's a like the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race that we had in April, something that grabs the attention of democratic activists from around the country is just gonna increase our numbers during that campaign. But maybe they drop off because they're not interested in writing for a mayor's race or whatever else that we might be doing next. And that's okay. But the reason I mentioned the how, why it's important for the number of recently active writers is that I am using that to project How many addresses could we accomplish in the next, you know, month.

Tony The Democrat (43:35):

I've got to balance the, the available resources to the demand. Every November, we probably receive around 300 or more campaigns that ask for our help. Well, we, we, we don't have enough volunteers to write for all of those congressional districts. Which is why I really enjoy these opportunities to speak with a new audience, because we need to continually recruit additional writers so that we can help more candidates. And even those writers that may have joined once, if you're listening, please consider just engaging with us once a month. Just write five postcards once a month. And that will give me the confidence that, oh, yeah, Larry is still engaged. He reached out to us just a few weeks ago to write, so when I'm doing my projections, I can include Larry and all those other, you know, five cards a month writers so that I can more confidently make commitments to these campaigns.

Tony The Democrat (44:49):

The last thing I want to do is say yes to campaigns and then come up short that we weren't able to finish their entire list. Because it does two things. It hurts them, of course, 'cause they were counting on us, but it also disrespects the time and donated postage of those early writers who might have written a fraction of that list. But because we didn't have enough writers, or because I overcommitted ourselves to write for too many campaigns, we didn't finish enough of these different lists to move the needle in any statistically meaningful way. And that's just a disservice to the volunteers, frankly, because what's the point of writing tiny amounts for lots of candidates if none of them are high enough number to really make a difference in the outcome? Does that make sense?

Larry (45:47):

So that's why you concentrate more on smaller races.

Tony The Democrat (45:54):

I wouldn't say that. You know, this most recent November election you know a couple weeks ago we had three statewide races concurrently. We were writing for the public service commission in Georgia for two Democratic candidates. That was a statewide race. We wrote for the Pennsylvania judicial retention ballot question. That was a statewide race. And the third one was for the governor's race in New Jersey. But in addition to those three statewide races that were probably available for the longest span of time for that election cycle, we also wrote for mayor and city council and state legislature, you know, races that, that came to us. It, it, it should not come across to your listeners that I'm, I am complaining that we don't have enough volunteers, because I always put whatever our capacity that we have at that time to its most efficient use for the campaigns that reach out to us.

Tony The Democrat (47:09):

Right? What I am, what I'm trying to convey is that we always need more volunteers because there are always more campaigns that want our help that we're not able to help, okay? But I'm still very proud, immensely proud of the accomplishments that the can, the volunteers that we did have with us were able to accomplish. Because we, we, we prevailed in Georgia and in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and I think every other candidate that we helped down the ballot that he wasn't in those three races, all but maybe two won. And one of them was running for mayor of Marietta, Georgia, and he came with an 89 votes of winning. He was a 24-year-old African-American first time candidate running to beat a, a, an, an incumbent that was entrenched. And he came within 89 votes. And it, it just I don't know. I just, I just, I love what I do, and I know our volunteers love what they do, and that's just every month are are new stories of what the postcards are, are, are powering. And I and I, I, I, I hope, I hope, I hope it comes across in, in my, in my tone and in my voice, in my words here, I just, it's the best thing that I think I've ever done with my life. And I'm, I'm so glad that folks are, are, are, are helping and pitching in every, at every turn.

Larry (48:55):

That brings us to probably the most important thing for campaigns and for volunteers. And that's your website,

Tony The Democrat (49:09):

<Laugh>? Yes. postcards to voters do.org. Do, do I wanna emphasize what

Larry (49:18):

Well, I was gonna say, that's where campaigns can get the information about signing up to request postcards, and that's where volunteers can get the information on how to become a volunteer.

Tony The Democrat (49:38):

Exactly. and, and they can request addresses once they become approved. So really, everything is happening on the website. It's postcards to voters.org, and that's plural. Postcards and plural voters. I know you'll include it in your show link you know, your, your show notes. But that was by the way, I just wanna give a shout out to the volunteer who back in 2017 helped us put that together. We we were, I mean, everything you see is, is done by one or more volunteers. There's a, there are a lot of people behind the scenes that keep things running smoothly, that developed the technology infrastructure that we're using. And I, I just, again, just continue to be amazed at the generosity of volunteers coming together for this common cause and getting it done year after year. Who knew that we were gonna be here nearly nine years later when this whole thing first started.

Tony The Democrat (50:49):

And it's because of all those talented and dedicated people that see a need and say, Tony, I can help you with that. And then they do it. And we've got a team of people that are reading emails from, from folks that, that wanna join. And they're, they're working almost 18 between, between the, the whole team of them. They're covering almost an 18 hour a day shift from east to west coast, answering these emails typically in less than an hour. So that prospective volunteer writers have a quick resolution to their question. They get on board and writing quickly. It, I, I really hope that all of those people their first name, the Democrat, we're all blank, the Democrat, and we're all getting it done together. And I'm, I'm just really so grateful to everybody.

Larry (51:47):

So there are no requests for donations. It's all a volunteer organization.

Tony The Democrat (51:54):

Well, good point. So there are things that cost money. Obviously, you know, technology doesn't come free. So we do have ongoing monthly expenses. Fortunately, it's, we're, we're a pretty flat organization, and so we, we don't have the kinds of salary expenses or office space or, you know, those kinds of you know, burdensome and quite expensive you know, things to pay for every month. But there is a donate page on the website. Folks can either mail us a check or they can set something up securely to donate one time, or even to set up a, a monthly recurring gift. I, I remind people that having a recurring gift set up really gives us the budgeting confidence to say, to pay for something that's on maybe an annualized fee, like a subscription for one of our backend data analytics tools called Splunk.

Tony The Democrat (53:01):

Well, that's $1,800 a year. But when I know that we've got a certain amount expected to come in every month because of the generous, recurring donors it just makes it possible to cover these expenses without me personally worrying where am I gonna get the money to pay for that when the bill comes due. Still though, in the scheme of things, the, the expenses are not as much as one would think overall. So even just donating $3 a month or something like that, when you add it up, it definitely goes a long way. And I've, I'm so lucky. I think we've all been fortunate to come up with this program design so that we've never had a, a time where I wasn't able to pay one of our vendors or to pay for one of the services that we rely on. It's, it's, it's, it's, we get exactly what we need and not a whole lot more, which, which is, that's, that's better than the opposite, right? Coming up short. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. When you, when you've got bills to pay, is not a good feeling. So I just, I want to thank the, the donors out there who've been with us. And for all those, whether it's a one-time donation or it's a monthly gift, it, it really continues to help us grow and and reach more, more voters.

Larry (54:42):

Tony, thank you so much for coming on specifically for seniors and sharing this journey with us today. For listeners who want to get involved, again, visit postcards to voters.org and sign up as volunteers. Tony, thank you again,

Tony The Democrat (55:04):

Larry. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And I hope that if folks think of any questions that maybe we didn't touch on, that they will feel welcome to send us an email and ask their questions. I'm happy to answer them and, and and see you online.

Larry (55:22):

So mention your address, your email address. Again,

Tony The Democrat (55:26):

Join@Tonythedemocrat.Org.

Larry (55:31):

Tony, thanks again.

Tony The Democrat (55:34):

My pleasure. Thank you. Good luck on, on your next podcasts.

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