Reflective Essay: Get Out The Vote

President Ronald Reagan once said, “When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.” This quote relates directly to many of my experiences as a leader; however, to illustrate my leadership skills, I would recount my most significant trip as a college republican during our recent “Get Out the Vote” deployment in Jacksonville, Florida. About twenty college republicans from Mississippi and Alabama packed up on a bus and headed south to hit what was possibly the most important swing state in America before election day. We had an important job- utilizing the final hours before November 8, 2016, to convince those in Duval County that we needed President Trump. As I began my first day of walking door to door and phone banking, I realized that some of these people seemed to have no interest in my candidate. What could I do to swing them the other way? I needed to think of alternative ways to reach a deeper level with these citizens. I was faced with a decision when I realized that handing them a pamphlet simply was just not enough. I sat during our first break spinning my wheels and trying to find a solution to this problem. In this
Instead of initially asking which candidate they were planning to vote for, I began by asking questions straight from the platform of President-elect Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It would be hard, but it was going to “make them feel the heat.” After our lunch break, I approached the first door and knocked. Once the woman answered the door, I asked if she would be interested in an unbiased conversation about the Presidential candidate’s policies. To my content, she was; I began by asking about her feelings on tax increases, late term abortions, and ISIS. As it turned out, the woman was a citizen who was not going to vote; however, after our conversation, she had multiple questions for me and wanted pamphlets not only for herself, but for her