This is about the how-to of grassroots campaigning. Sent to me by a friend IN F'K CANADA who is phonebanking. (The ending will make you cry or laugh or ??)
My link isn't working. See byonic's below. Thanks byonic!
The voting system used has lead to a democracy of only two parties (Duverger's Law). There's a very strong us-versus-them mentality comparing the Democrats and Republicans. Because of this, the interesting political debates don't really happen at the party level but at the candidate level - so it matters a lot which person is nominated, because if they win it's their ideas and policies that they will try to drag through Congress. If you want to know why it is in the news every. single. day, Ryan Holiday explains in his book that news outlets like Politico figured out that they can start coverage of the race years in advance. They do this simply by discussing and speculating on potential candidates and ramping up the coverage from there on. This election has been nuts (at least from my perspective) in no small part because of all the media attention generated around it.
It seems to both people outside of the US and those inside to be a very complicated process. The thing is this: you do not just vote for a president. The two main parties have to decide on a specific candidate. This is done by people voting in "primaries." Primaries are different in each state. In some states, like Washington, the vote is held in a caucus. People may want to vote but have no idea where their caucus actually is. That's why teams of canvassers went to the homes of known supporters and left them info on where to vote. Very complicated. In some states the winner of the primary takes all the delegates of that state. In other states they send delegates to both candidates. Then there are super-delegates who can do wtf, I don't know. Often when it gets to the actual CONVENTION to nominate a presidential candidate for that party, it has already been decided and everyone knows. This year might be different. Anyone can correct me - I know very little. I'm in Canada.
I don't know if it's just me, but the link isn't working