By Aileen Bell
I walked away from the house, back onto the sidewalk ready to cross the street to knock on the door of another Des Moines, Iowa Democrat. That’s when the pain started. I had rolled my left ankle. I screamed an expletive and hopped on one foot until the pain subsided enough to limp up the stairs of a single-family home. When my day started, I hadn’t expected it to go like this, and I’m sure you’re wondering how I ended up here.
After waking up earlier than I normally enjoy to hop in the shower and grab some breakfast, I climbed onto our charter bus with a significant amount of our class ready to head to Ingersoll Avenue to volunteer for my top choice candidate and favorite person of all time, Elizabeth Warren. Along with 4 other Elon students, I arrived promptly at eleven to a staffer that seemed slightly surprised by our presence but was able to get us to work quickly almost immediately splitting us up to head out to canvas.
Our canvassing began with excitement. I rolled my ankle only minutes after being dropped off by our Uber. Luckily, I have strong ankles and recovered quickly. Most of the pain was gone by house number four. Other than that and many dogs seen through street facing windows, this was actually one of the dullest canvassing experiences I’ve ever had. Most of the houses were absent of people able to speak to us, and most of the people who did answer weren’t interested in prolonged conversations. We did find one person committed to caucusing for Warren, not surprisingly a younger college-aged student, and we even got him to fill out a “fight card” a feat our field organizer was shocked we managed our first day. Otherwise, most people, without saying it directly, seemed tired of the process and having people at their doors.
The most candid answers we heard about these feelings actually came from some of our Uber drivers throughout the day. When heading to our different neighborhoods for canvassing, we had a driver curious about our presence in Iowa. He had lived in Des Moines for over 20 years but hadn’t participated in a caucus until 2016. The hype didn’t make sense to him and he said it was an experience cherished more by natural born Iowans. Our Lyft driver after dinner, Bruce, expressed similar sentiments. He also had issues with the way the caucuses work. He had only participated in one before and had no interest in participating again. He said they were too time consuming and was also annoyed he couldn’t attend the opposite party’s caucuses due to the way voter registration works within Iowa. These complaints and general disdain were interesting to hear, as I personally love the idea of the caucuses and think they are a shining part of our democracy.
I’m looking forward to, hopefully, having longer and more serious conversations with voters as we attend rallies and continue to volunteer. I was hoping voters would be more interested in talking to us, but that wasn’t the case. Hopefully, we just had a bad batch of turf, and I’ll have much more interesting stories to tell later.
Elon University - Iowa: The Trail Starts Here 