The Iowa Democratic Party is one of the best, if not the best, in the nation.  Many of the most ambitious organizers in the country come to Iowa to get experience here in the hopes of being more attractive to a Presidential campaign.  Iowa is perpetually competitive for these, and also usually has two or more competitive house races due to our nonpartisan redistricting.  Oh, and we have the caucuses.  This means a lot of money coming into the state for Democratic politics on a consistent basis, which also helps attract and especially retain quality staff.

The continuity created by the caucus organizing and competitive races has also led to more sustained structural development.  The most valuable asset is the Voter Activation Network (the VAN, as it is called), a voter database with collected information on voters going back to at least 1996.  The party has been using palm pilots for canvassing since 2002, with the information collected uploaded quickly and easily into the VAN.

Our field operation doesn't involve a lot of trade secrets.  Much like everywhere else it involves recruiting and retaining volunteers, and getting them to make phone calls and knock doors whenever possible.

In Iowa, we have pretty flexible absentee voting rules.  You can request a ballot at any time for any reason by filling out a short form.  That form can be delivered or mailed to the appropriate County auditor, who will mail that person a ballot 40 days, give or take, before the election.  Most of our summer and early fall efforts concentrate on getting Democrats signed up for these, with a special focus on infrequently voting Democrats.  We also asked frequently voting no party voters about their preferences in the statewide and legislative races, and recorded that information for use later in targeting and persuasion.

Our paid canvass was one of the most successful in the state, but still represented maybe a quarter of the total absentee ballots cast by Democrats or identified No Party supporters.  (The biggest source of absentee votes was probably the mailing program, where preprinted absentee requests were sent out with instructions on how to fill them out.)  We also identified over 100k voters' positions on state races, and found a few hundred people who were interested in volunteering.  (In 2004 the canvass teams also raised money, but because of the funding arrangement in 2006 this would have been illegal.)  The paid canvass ended in late August, because most of the canvassers were college students who had to go back to school.  It was restarted in CD 1 because of the DCCC targeted Braley/Whalen race there.

The field program started with the canvass in June.  Initially it just involved recruiting volunteers to try to recruit more volunteers, to build up a solid base for the future when more people were paying attention to the election.  There was also event-building calls for the Gubernatorial candidate, but since my entire region was in the Des Moines media market I didn't have to deal with too many of these.  I had two offices online in June with one field organizer each.  One of them quit in early July, and the other one had more campaign experience than me, so I was able to focus mostly on the canvass for the summer.

After August I was officially bumped up to four field organizers, although one of them quit before I met her so I had three in three offices until mid-September.  For a month or so after this transition we focused on recruiting more volunteers and getting more absentee ballot requests.  Then absentee ballots were mailed out, and the process shifted more to making sure they were turned into the county auditors.  That was essentially all we did until shortly before the election, where we implement much the same program as the Republicans do for the 72 hours before the election - canvassing and calling our entire GOTV universe during the weekend, and trying desperately to pick up the last outstanding absentee ballots.  (I don't have exact figures for this, but we had 90% of them returned by 3pm the day before the election.)  On election day we did basically the same thing.

My experience was very positive.  I think I generally lucked out by having committed county chairs throughout the region, and a good volunteer base for the most part.  Still, there are things that I think could be improved.  This is getting long so I'm not going to write out an entire manifesto, but I'd like to focus on one particular issue:  staffing hours.

It is not unusual for field staff to work 80 hour weeks.  When the campaign started in June I was expected to work 73 hours a week.  My canvassers were scheduled for 56, and my field organizers for 66.  After August we lost our Saturdays off, and while I gained some time by not having to canvass areas up to two hours away and thus kept the same overall hours, that bumped my field organizers up to 70.  As often as not we had weekend events that required additional time, making 80+ hour weeks the norm for more than two months.

During that time I could feel my competence slipping, and I could see the same happening to my team.  Studies on worker productivity almost universally conclude that a 40 hour work week is near-ideal in terms of total productivity.  One study (pdf) of construction work determined that after two months of working 60 hour weeks, total overall productivity reaches parity with a 40 hour work week, and craters from then on.  Obviously construction is a significantly different field than politics, but it was the only study on short term effects of longer hours I could find and the longterm effects of the work week seem to be roughly parallel for both physical and knowledge workers.

Of course there are plenty of mitigating factors for politics - staffers are usually pretty young and relatively healthy, they tend to view organizing as more than "just a job," etc.  I'd be very interested in seeing the results of a study that specifically studied productivity in organizing, but for now all I really have to go on is my personal experience.  And that experience suggests to me that the common practice of working 70-90 hours a week is counterproductive.

My canvassers complained about the hours, correctly citing that the job description was misleading about the expectations.  I ended up giving them all two mornings off per week, reducing their average week to "just" 50 hours.  My canvass team was pretty definitively the best in the state, with every single canvasser performing above the state average, and five of them in the top ten (out of 72 full-time positions).  That slightly exaggerates their overall effectiveness because not every canvasser worked through the entire summer, but my office also had the lowest canvasser turnover rate in the state, and was the only office to maintain full employment throughout the entire summer - a feat which is probably not unrelated to the reduced hours.

I didn't really make any changes to our overall plan to improve the performance of my field organizers.  Their performance was essentially at the middle of the pack in day-to-day performance, although they were the most accurate at predicting event turnout and were the most effective for each of our capacity-testing trainings and weekends.  In retrospect I wish I had done more to reduce their hours.  It would have been more difficult since two of my offices had only one staffer operating out of them, but there are a couple of things I could have done.

I should have emphasized the importance of finding a competent volunteer to hold down the fort for two or three hours a day.  Getting out of the office is important for sanity, and in most cases field organizers are forced to get fast food or eat their lunches in the office.

Failing that, I should have made it clear that I had no expectations of any work until after 1pm.  While organizers generally need to be around in case people stop in to volunteer or need some sort of help with something, there usually isn't anything important to do for 13 hours a day.  Since we did night-time reporting, mornings were pretty dead.

During the time I had two organizers in the same office I had them alternate taking 9:30-12:30 and 1 to 4 off.  That worked pretty well, and I would definitely continue that process in offices with more than one organizer.

There are other ways that Democratic field organizing could be improved in Iowa, and certainly other states require some more basic improvements, such as a functional voter file.  I think this is a universal problem that is seldom discussed though (other than when staffers joke about trying to unionize) and rarely addressed.