So, the Law of the Few is that the Few, including Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen, have a disproportionate influence over the many, and that therefore, if you want to Tip a social epidemic, you can save your resources by finding some of the Few, and convincing them.
Could it be done for Voter Turnout? How would we go about it?
Well, I think first, it would be up to the parties at the local level to find the Mavens. Spend a little money—not much, just a little, a million or so—to get a task force to call up precinct committeemen, wardmen, and local activists, and ask if they know any Mavens or Connectors. Get lists. Compare lists. Refine the lists. A dozen people could make a pretty good start on this in six months; that would bring us to September. Then get your Salesmen—it should be fairly easy for the state parties to hire a few of these, as is, after all, the job of the party, in many ways, and if they are too feeble, ask the unions—to visit your Mavens, and your Connectors, preferably together. Go to the grocery store with them, and to the school when they pick up their kids. Go to the meetings the Connector goes to, and when the Connector gets calls, put the Salesman on for a moment. Talk about voting.
Imagine it. In September and October, the Salesmen the Party has use of will be going to shopping malls and cookouts anyway, but if a Salesman spends three or four days with a connector; how many people does he meet? And with the Connector next to him, he really meets them, and with a Maven next to him, he has all the right information at his fingertips. Instead of the Salesman inefficiently working the union picnics, he is working with the Connectors and Mavens, meeting more people, and having a better chance to convince the unconvinced.
That’s it. A few thousand Salesmen, put in the right places, alongside the right people. Oh, you’ll need all kinds of follow-up, but the beauty of the Law of the Few is that these Few can convince the Many. A few thousand visits to grocery stores and K-marts, convincing a hundred people because of that combination (a Salesman, a Connector to introduce him, and the Maven to give him the right info) means a few hundred thousand people. That’s half a percent of the voters. Which is a start.
It can be scaled up a little bit; as you go through the process, you find new Connectors and (I hope) new Mavens, and you keep working with them. Have a Connector Maven on staff, to keep all the information on the Connectors, and of course a Connector, to keep in touch with all of them. It only goes so far, but it’s a lot further than it goes now, and it starts us toward that Tipping Point.
Yes, I’m looking at it from a Party point of view. I don’t really know how else to do it, as the resources are party resources. I don’t think that a non-partisan, impartial, disinterested Voter Turnout group will be able to command the loyalty of the Mavens and Connectors, nor to afford to hire Salesmen (either as pure hires, or, as with our Party’s and Unions’ Salesmen now, work-cheapish-for-the-good-guys discount). I could be wrong, I suppose. It could be tried; TiptheVote (dot org) could set itself up as a vote-smart type Public Interest group, and try to get the lists of Mavens and Connectors that the parties already have (but don’t know it). It could raise money, and pitch itself to the Salesmen who work for each party, for the unions and the corporations, and see if duplicating the party effort isn’t too exhausting and expensive to keep itself alive. It could even, perhaps, work with both major parties to combine lists; it would be nice to think that both parties have an interest in more voters, and would share information through some honest broker. But I think, if it’s going to be done, it’s going to be done through the Parties.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
A small comment: Adding a Connector to a Salesperson-Maven team at K-Mart isn’t using the Connector to best effect — the Connector isn’t likely to have met anyone at the store previously (besides the clerks) in order to have formed the ‘weak ties’ that make Connectors so influential.
The real challenge in trying to get voting to tip will be to identify and recruit Connectors who are not yet big on voting. If a Connector is already enthusiastic about voting, then it’s likely that their cloud of connections has already been saturated with the pro-vote message. Having a Salesperson shadow this Connector will help reinforce the message and win a few more people over from apathy, but the gains won’t be as great as when the message is novel coming from a particular Connector.
One other thought: the whole C-S synergy might go right down the tubes if the connectees suspect that the Salesperson is being foisted on them by the Connector.
Pardon my ramble.
If it’s the Connector’s K-Mart, she will know nearly everybody who shops there, in addition to the staff, the management, and the nearby street crazies. That’s what being a Connector is. Or not, I don’t claim to understand the ‘weak ties’ thing well.
And the whole foisting thing is, in fact, suspect, but wouldn’t it still work better than the traditional cookouts, union picnics, and dinner parties, not to mention the tv ads?
As for the saturation, yes, well, hm. You may be right. The Connector won’t be as persuasive as the Salesman, of course, but it’s not like the message is that difficult to convey. Would a Salesman really get people to come out who had already been asked by the Connector and hadn’t quite made it to the polls? I don’t know, and if he wouldn’t, well, then, the whole plan doesn’t have much effect.
Any other ideas?
R.I.,
-V.