Change I can believe in!

I live in Fairfax County, Virginia.  I am a member of the Fairfax County Republican Committee and am  assisting my precinct captain (whilst kicking and screaming) to win in our county-wide elections this fall.  My precinct lies at the very western edge of the county.  We have one of the largest rolls of registered voters (4800) in the county (although we have no apartment complexes and very few townhome communities).   While waiting for my PC to hand over the voter rolls of my precinct (and I'm working on my district chairwoman to give up the entire district's), I went to the Commonwealth's Board of Elections page in order gauge the effectiveness of my PC.

So, I’ve been looking over my precinct numbers (in terms of turnout) over the last the past few election cycles. As expected, off year election turnout is rather low. But even in bad years like 2006, my numbers don’t change much. For instance, in 2006 – a terrible year for Republicans in general and George Allen specifically – 910 voters pulled the lever for Senator Allen (1235 for Webb). In the next off-year election cycle 2009, only 924 voters turned out for Bob McDonnell (now Governor) (858 for Deeds). One would think that the general elections would prove to turn out many, many more Republicans, yet in 2004 John Kerry won the precinct with 1482 votes to G.W.B’s 1462 (yeah, it was that close) and 2008 was slightly worse with only 1255 votes for McCain to Obama’s 1684 (perhaps ~200 registered Republicans voted for Obama? Reverse Operation Chaos?).

I'm also a member of my home owner association's "Dad's Club." One of the members stopped my house last Saturday to see if I would be interested in organizing an event with him. As we talked, I got the sense that he was right-of-center and tried to gauge his interest in helping out with precinct operations. He was excited to become involved and seemed eager for victory in 2012. While I matched his enthuisam in defeating President Obama and the democrat nominee for outgoing Sen Webb, I mentioned that this years elections were even more important, as all seats from Soil and Water Conservation to State Senate were up for grabs. He. Had. No. Idea. No idea that 2011 was an election year (and to be fair, there are no campaign signs up in the district, as campaign laws ban any signs outside 75 days or so on an election. Candidates in primary races have signs displayed all over the rest of the county though!). I have to estimate that less than 50% of all registered Republicans in my precinct are in the same boat as his poor guy. So, having this understanding and knowing the numbers from past election cycles, what is a guy to do?

I think it is possible to increase voter turnout in November of this year. Assuming that I get some help from like-minded neighbors, I think it would be rather easy to get a general election turnout for an off-off year election. I think a reasonable goal, though, would be 1100 Republican votes.

My source for the numbers above: http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/Election_Information/Election_Resul...

Question for PROCINCT... Are you able to create voter overlays of district/precinct maps?  I think it would be incredibly usefull to have at a PC's disposal (especially one with thousands of registered Republicans in your precinct) a map to plan GOTV door-to-door activities.  If this capability doesn't exist, I'd like you all to be witnesses of my intellectual property ;-)

Please check out the Facebook page I've created for my precinct.  I have yet really do much with it, but will have the URL on each piece of literature I hand out to Republican voters in the precinct.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Clearview-Precinct-Republicans/220...

Oh, and if I put all of this effort into this, I would very much like to challenge my PC at the very earliest possible time.  Are there any Virginians here who may know when that time would come next?

Thank you for your time!