This is an all-volunteer effort. We are looking for people to either make a minimum commit to ensure they and their friends vote, to people who can commit more time and effort towards electing a better Presient of the United States.

Level 1 Commitment:

• You commit to voting,
• You talk to at least five friends, and secure their commitment to voting
• You sporadically check with your friends (Are you registered? Are you voting by mail? Etcetera.)
• We sporadically send you an email (and you can opt out at any time).

Level 2 Commitment:

• You get at least one of your friends to join at a Level 1 Commitment

Level 3 Commitment

• You volunteer to help us at least 1 hour per month

Level 4 Commitment

• You volunteer lots of hours for us!!!

We are a tiny organization strives to grow bigger. We are an all-volunteer group, and we think our next volunteer is you!

Here’s the things our volunteers do:

• Produce emails
• Create training materials
• Create graphic materials
• Create and maintain webpages
• Create handouts
• Talk to people (No joke! This is real!)
• Write emails
• Keep the books straight
• Outreach on social media
• Outreach in person
• Liaison to other organizations
• Research and writing
• Legal Compliance
• Administration of the Five Friends organization

Somewhere in here, we bet there’s something for which you have a skill and a passion, and that will help us elect a new president in 2020!

If you haven’t joined us yet, please click here to register.

Links to other pages:

Join Us!

Two Questions (Do you want to see someone else elected president?)

Our Volunteers

It’s not just about planning to show up on election day.

It’s also about preparing.

A former candidate for congress told me about Sun City Roseville (California). He said that candidates need to have done their voter outreach by the first weekend in October in anticipation of the November elections.

He explained to me that 60% of the people in that development (which caters to retired seniors) votes by mail. If a candidate has not performed his/her outreach by that first weekend, he/she faces the potential of underperforming in that neighborhood.

Winning is not just about people promising to vote. It needs to go deeper than that.

I’ve seen it where adults with the good intention of voting don’t make it to the polls: something happens at work; somebody’s child gets sick. The lines at the polling station are too long and they have to leav to make it to an appointment. They intended to vote, but it just didn’t happen.

So part of the Five Friends approach involves preparation….

•  Registering to vote
•  Knowing who to vote for
•  Voting by mail where possible
•  Voting early where possible

In order to increase the voter turnout of people who will vote for the Democratic candidate, we need to …

•  Know how to register voters in all 50 states (and in the territories, too).
•  Know what the requirements are for vote by mail, and
•  Know about early voting (where needed)

So we need help. We need people who can do research and writing to find the laws and provide the links to make sure our voters are actually registered, and where possible, they find the most reliable path to getting their ballot turned in.

The “friends” we’re asking you to contact are people you know: friends, family members, co-workers, neighbors, and others including people you know on social media but possibly have never met in person.

Where I live, we’re kind of screwed politically. The state is die-hard Republican; the city is Democratic, but gerrymandered into different congresisonal districts so the Republicans get 5 of the local 6 congressional seats, even though the local Democrats outnumber the Republicans.

So maybe it doesn’t matter if my friends vote.

But it does matter: Maybe we can defeat the incumbent Republican senator and replace him with a Democrat. Beto O’Rourke only lost by about 1% to Ted Cruz in Texas, which many people think is die-hard Republican. With better voter turnout, we’d now be calling him “Senator O’Rourke.”

Maybe it matters in a local city council race. 

So – – back to the issue of “who are your friends?”

When I choose my friends for this project, I’m going to choose people who (a) are reliable Democratic voters, and (b) live in other states. Especially since I know people in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two of the states that swung to Trump in 2016. Those two states, plus Ohio, are high on the list of swing states. Florida is close in there, too.

I’m also going to go door to door. In my neighborhood, there’s people I don’t know but are flying a gay pride flag outside. There’s other people who have signs outside that say “Black lives Matter. Science is Real…” I’m going to knock on their doors, introduce myself, and present the “Five Friends” project.

I’ll ask them to join, and I’ll ask them who else they know on the street would be receptive to the Five Friends message.

Two Questions

1. Do the things Trump and his cronies do make you angry?
2. Are you willing to do something about it?

Here’s what we’re doing: We’re voting.

It’s more than that: We’re getting five of our friends to vote, too.

It’s even more than that, but let’s simply start at the beginning with the end in mind: The next president of the United States will be the one who wins the election. Presidential elections are won state-by-state.

It’s still even more than that: It’s not just about presidential eeletions, but its also about senators, governors, congressional representatives, state representatives, city council members and school board members. We want to make sure the peoples’ voices are heard!

Here’s how to get started:

1. Make a list of 5 friends, neighbors, relatives or co-workers that you can count on as a progressive vote.
2. Contact them. Let them know that you are concerned about the future of this country. Let them know you will continue to contact them sporadically because voting is how we change the insanity.

If you’re up for doing more, that’s great! Do this with more than 5 friends. Do more by helping us with the organization. We could use the help.

We are a grassroots, all-volunteer organization that is just now getting started.

We wlll need help producing emails, creating training materials, maintaining web pages, and doing outreach through social media.

You can either do this on your own (Five Friends is an open resource), or you can help us create a more robust website with research, writing and downloadable materials.

Links:

Registration page (Join us!): www.fivefriends.org/join-us/