How to win a Presidential by-election

I hesitated for a very long time before posting this. But clearly, certain candidates need all the help they can get. For those who dislike politics, continue walking. There is nothing to see here.

FIRST RULE: VOLUNTEERS
Recruit as many volunteers as possible. This seems obvious. But to some it is not. Friends in classes, your friend's friends, acquaintances, students seated on federated bodies... It really does not matter. Send emails. Make phone calls. Organise meetings with each person individually and tell them why you are best suited to be President. Adapt your speech to each person.

Be effective with your volunteers. Do not burn them out. Use them to post some posters, but not all posters.

Find prominent volunteers. Regardless of whether that person is popular or not, if they are known, it will help your campaign by adding credibility to it. Remember, your enemy's enemy is your friend.

SECOND RULE: CLASSROOM PRESENTATIONS
Stick to basics. Here is what wins: Classroom presentations and posters. It's not rocket science.

Though it might not seem that way, most people are not even aware there is an election. Most people do not even know what the letter "S F U O" stand for. Most people don't know who you are and still won't know who you are after this campaign. The only way to reach students is through classroom presentations. Focus on large classrooms. Witchcraft has roughly 400 students. First year engineering courses have 2-3-400 students. Unsure about the class sizes? Research. A serious candidate will do, at the very minimum, six classroom presentations per day. Anything less and you should not be running in this campaign.

Competent campaigners will be able to do more than six. Use volunteers to help you do classrooms. Use DVDs for classrooms with multimedia capacity. Contact Professors before the classes to inform them that you will be coming in. If you establish contact, ask what time the break is at and go during the break, to allow you to do more than one class per hour.


THIRD RULE: POSTERS
You should have posters. And you should have the maximum amount of posters, if not more. Rarely, if ever, will the Elections Office count each single poster. They will take your word at it. If they say 100, print 110. If they decide to count because they read this post, then just say "That's what Staples gave me." Bottom line, every candidate I spoke with in the General election printed more than the allowed quantity.

Your posters should be visible and clean. People will not read your platform on your poster. Be concise with the text on your posters. Forget about writing clichés like about status quo and more communication with students. People are indifferent. You want the nicest photo of yourself. You want to be smiling. You want your name in big. As big as possible. And you want your website and one huge idea. That's all.

Post often. Post everywhere. If you see your opponent's poster, post one next to it. Do not under-estimate the value of the posters.

If you are running on a green campaign, and think postering is absurd, I agree with you 100%. Most students will agree with you. Unfortunately, they will not know of you unless they know you are running, and they won't know you are running, unless they see your poster and see you in a classroom. So keep it simple. Make posters. Bite the bullet. And say "If I win, I promise to reduce the amount of posters on campus. It is obscene." This will 1) help you get elected 2) be coherent with your green values.

FOURTH RULE: IDEAS + YOUR MESSAGE
Run on good ideas. This might sound obvious, but it is not. People are indifferent to more communication or more visibility for the SFUO. You need to limit your message to one or two big projects and you want people to identify your campaign to those ideas. You want to be the candidate who said "I want the SFUO to run a day-care" or "I want the SFUO to give all students legal advice by improving the Legal clinic." You want other candidates to steal your ideas.

Keep your ideas simple. You want to be able to summarize them in one sentence. If you need to explain your idea for more than one minute before people understand it, then it is not going to sell well. Put it in your platform, it will encourage students who like your main ideas to come and help you. But don't use it in your speech.

Also, your idea might not reach unanimity. But you are not looking for unanimity. It is not as though 30 000 students vote. 3000-4000 students usually vote and who knows, for this by-election, maybe less than 2 000 will actually vote. You need an idea that inspires 1500 students enough to vote. Even if you encounter controversy in your classrooms or from other candidates, carry on. Just inspire enough people to go out and vote.

Do not dilute your message to attract your opponent's supporters. Odds are this will fail and will, if anything, push away your potential supporters. There is ample room to get more students out to vote. This is the demographic you should be looking at. Not the students already voting.

FIFTH RULE: YOUR MESSAGE
Adapt your speech to each classroom/department/faculty. If you are in Law, talk about the Agora and how you plan on making it more relavent to Law Students. If you are in Music, talk about the lack of support the Music department is getting from the SFUO. If you are in Telfer, talk about the bad management that is happening at the SFUO. It really does not matter what your message is, but you have to adapt it to your audience.

Also, be awake when you are in front of the class. By dynamic. Be interactive. Ask questions. Get the teacher involved, if possible. Plant questions, if possible. Repeat, scream, be seen, be heard. Some candidates will start speaking when half the class is absent and the other half is talking. What's the point? Walk around the class. Get the teacher to introduce you. Write your name/website on the chalkboard. Hand out flyers. Whatever it takes.

SIXTH RULE: REACH OUT
Contact each and every club, federated body, BOA member, Service, Gee-Gees team, journalist you can see. Request meetings. Email them your platform. Do not send generic emails all the time. Establish a rapport with as many groups as possible. The Muslim Student Association, for instance, has 1000 members. They have been lobbying for separate pool/gym hours. Last year, a presidential candidate made a promise to lobby in that direction to the group and needless to say, it helped the campaign. That is an extreme example, but it is easy to pick up 10, 20, 30 votes here and there. If you are able to reach a larger group, like the MSA or like Green Campus, then that number might significantly grow.

Clubs are iffy. Some are efficient and are able to send a message to their members. Others are one person led organizations. Figure out which ones work and meet with them.

Federated bodies are effective because they are the closest to the members. Request meetings with as many as you can, and start with the largest ones (Engineering, Arts, PIDSSA, etc.)

Services think they are more important than they are. Service Directors are the proudest people you will meet. Make the effort to meet with them. Explain to them how your candidacy is relevant to their service.

Gee-Gees will be a bit hard now. But each team has 20 players. There are a dozen of teams. If you are able to reach out and explain that you want a partnership, or at the very least you feel it is important, you have a potential of getting 100-200 additional votes.

Go to RGN twice. Your opponent will probably go once. Go twice. Different days of the week, and if possible different hours. During lunch time, you will get about 200 people that are directly targetable. If you go on Mondays and Fridays you are likely to avoid getting the same people there. RGN students like to be heard/seen. There is a free shuttle bus that goes to RGN every half-hour (or is it hour) from campus. Use it. Get volunteers to go and talk about you. Get someone studying at RGN to campaign on your behalf. You can easily get hundreds of vote on RGN alone.

Media
Journalists are just like regular students, but with a pen. They're influence is somewhat limited. An endorsement might help your campaign, but it will probably not be the breaking point. What an endorsement does is simple: It gives credibility to your campaign. Even if you do not get endorsed, if you are able to extract something positive from the editorial/column, then you walk away with credibility from other student politicians and other politically obsessed students. The coverage you will receive will also help/hurt your campaign, if only in the eyes of those who "buzz" around campus. You want to prepare your articles. Before your interview with, say, Nick Taylor-Vaisey from the Fulcrum, read his past columns. If Frank Appleyard is interviewing you, read his articles. Do the same for Andréanne Baribeau and Céline Basto at La Rotonde. Note: Both papers do not share the same values and opinions. Adapt your message. Control your message. Repeat the same sentence as many times as possible so that it gets into the newspaper. Choose that sentence wisely. And if possible, put a word you would not usually see in a newspaper.

The point is, you want to be seen, you want to be heard and you want credibility. If you can not meet every group individually, send videos adapted to that group. Find a member that is willing to leak you an email list of that group and send an email directly to the members.

If you can get list-servs from Federated bodies, get them. Do not send an email too early in the campaign for two reasons: 1) people will forget. 2) you will get a penalty. Do it later on, closer to the voting day. Penalties will be impossible to enforce.

SEVENTH RULE: YOUR OPPONENT
Do not publicly attack your opponent. It is not necessary. It is beneath you. Get your volunteers to do it. Do it privately and "off the record". To it subtly. Say "My opponent is well-intentioned and frankly, some of his ideas are good. My biggest issue with his candidacy is the fact that it is simply not achievable/realistic/etc."

Figure out your opponent. And attack them efficiently. If you are running against an incumbent, mention that. "Do we really want someone who has been there for so many years?" If you are running against someone who is running for the first time, mention his lack of experience. Point is, adapt your message. This will be Dean Haldenby's fourth attempt to get on a SFUO ballot. That sounds much larger than it really is. Both other candidates are on their first attempts, and have no "inside" SFUO experience. That sounds much more scary than it really is.

Be respectful to your opponent. The worst thing you can do is marginalize yourself from the get-go. Try to meet your opponent before the campaign/during the campaign/after the campaign. Get to know that person. It will help you avoid complaints against your campaign and it will allow your opponent to say something like "He's a nice guy. I like him.", which will reassure your opponents.

EIGHTH RULE: LAST DAYS
It really does not matter what happened on day 1 if you are unable to get people to vote for you. Get as many volunteers (see First Rule) as possible and get them to stand close enough to the polling stations without being seen. You should have at least 20 volunteers on the last two days, all close to polling stations. All your volunteers should be identified somehow. Let them wear Blue/Red/Orange T-Shirts (their own) and use a Black Sharpie to write your name on them. Or use Posters and stick them on those volunteers. Essentially, you want them everywhere on the last days. You also want them to hand out flyers.

Flyers are effective because 1) they are cheap. 2) they are effective. You can print 20 flyers on the back of one poster, if not more. The cost is practically free. You should want 1000-2000 of these. Give them to each person that walks your way (or your volunteer's) and if possible, put them on the desks of large classrooms (Auditoriums).

These days will make a difference.

NINTH RULE: SPEND YOUR MONEY, AND MORE
Odds are, your opponent is not declaring all his expenditures. You have two choices. 1) Try to denounce him. 2) Join him. You do not need to declare each one of your scotch tape rolls, or each one of your markers, etc. There are ways to cut corners. If you feel this is unethical, find a way to catch your opponent doing it. (This blogger would not do it).
Some do it without realizing. In fact, most do.

You have 225$ to spend. If you get fined, so be it. You still have 225$ to spend. You will just get less money back. If you are uneasy with this, fundraise. If you are unable to fundraise 20-30-40-50-60-70 or even 100$, then you should not be running for this race. You have 225$ to spend, spend it.

TENTH RULE: ADVERTISE ON FACEBOOK
These ads are cheap. They are effective. Not many people will click on the ad. But they will see your name. Spend 20-30-40$. It really does not matter. You want your ad to be seen and seen often. Most candidates do not come close to the "highest" bid they put, so bid high. If you are worried about your expenses, put two ads and only declare one (Highly unethical and this blogger would not do it).

ELEVENTH RULE: MOVIES, PHOTOS, BLOGS
People are easily impressed. Make daily videos. Post often on your blog. Post photos of you shaking hands or meeting a club. It really does not matter what you do. But do a lot of it and do it well. What's the point of having a website if everything is under construction or if it is not updated throughout?

Make as many YouTube videos as possible. They really do not need to be fancy. Get someone to film one of your classroom presentations. Get someone to film you walking around campus. Get someone to film you dancing. Just get videos. Post them. And send links out to as many people as possible.

TWELFTH RULE: RESEARCH
If you are unable to get mailing lists, no sweat. Get volunteers to get as many U of O student's emails through the Search option on the uOttawa website. While your volunteer is at it, let them get you the names of coordinators, service directors, federated bodies' members, etc.

THIRTEENTH RULE: CHEATING
If you are going to cheat, cheat well. There is a "three strikes you're out" rule, and I am not aware of anyone being "out" in the last couple of years. The closer you get to the election date, the less likely it is you will get disqualified. Avoid getting warnings at the beginning. If you do decide to cheat, cheat effectively and make your warning count. Skipping meetings, postering on a painted wall are not effective cheating methods. The last two days of the campaign are literally free for alls. Do what you want to do. There is no way they can disqualify you at this point.

FOURTEENTH RULE: TIME
This is a short campaign. Stop wasting time. Stop reading this blog. Waste your time only when there are no more classes and no more students on campus. Stop going to classes. Take time off of work.

FIFTEENTH RULE: ASK FOR HELP
You will not be able to do this alone. You need help from other people. And a lot of people. Call people. Facebook them. Email them. Do whatever it takes, but broaden your coalition. You want someone to help you make posters, you want someone to help you poster, you want someone to help you do classroom presentations, you want someone to help you with strategy, etc. If you are running your first campaign, you clearly need some help. If you are running your third, your volunteers might start taking this race for granted.

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There are many other ways to win a Presidential By-election. Every candidate has his own style. You might disagree with some of these posts, but in the end, most of them will be essential to a potential victory. Winning takes a lot of work. So does being President.

I forget who said this, but I completely agree: "It is unfortunate that it takes one type of person to win elections and another type of person to govern effectively." Politics throws off a lot of people. It attracts many others.