I did a little canvassing today on behalf of Obama. When I was handed the usual walk lists for the work, I remarked that the campaign has a smartphone app for this kind of thing, called MiniVAN. In a few minutes, the canvassers had downloaded their walk lists to their phones and were ready to canvass. I was amazed at how much more efficient this app made canvassing.
The good news is that canvassers no longer need clipboards. The bad news is that canvassers no longer need clipboards! I found myself feeling somewhat naked knocking on doors without anything identifying me as a political canvasser other than one app loaded on my smartphone. True, I had some campaign lit but it was not enough cover to make me comfortable. I decided that if I’m going to canvass this way in the future, I’ll do it wearing a highly-visible campaign T-shirt.
MiniVAN seemed great when I loaded up its walking lists and headed out the door. I ran into trouble, though, when I tried to mark a voter’s status. Apparently one can’t simply click “canvassed” after an interaction. It took me until after I’d left the streets to figure out that the only way to mark a voter as canvassed is to answer a question on the “script” tab for that voter. That was not intuitive at all. Fortunately, though, now that I’ve figured that out I can use this with confidence.
Except the crashing part. Now that I’ve done my canvassing I cannot seem to upload the data I collected without the app crashing in the process.
Technology is great except when it isn’t.