A recent study by the Australian Volunteers Organisation (AVO) has confirmed that traditional election day recruitment tactics remain the most effective.
“Our data shows that aggressive thrusting of ‘how to vote’ cards combined with indecipherable yelling is the surest way to convince someone to vote for your party” said a spokesperson for AVO.
“Completely blocking the path of voters and being as irritating as possible are staples for good pamphlet pushers.
“You might think that annoying the crap out of people makes them less likely to vote for your candidate, but you’d definitely be wrong”.
Other techniques such as door-knocking and cold-calling are also thought to be highly successful in recruiting voters in the lead-up to an election.
“What we’re finding is that people love pretty much any time their privacy is invaded.
“We get reports from some of our volunteers that citizens are too excited about having someone knock at their door to cram political slogans down their throats, and they’ll need to hide in absolute silence for several minutes so that they can compose themselves.
“They’ll eventually poke their head out of the front door hoping desperately that the volunteer hasn’t left, and that’s when they’ll be bombarded with the pamphlets they crave so much.
“And with the cold-calling, some people are so impressed that volunteers managed to get around obstacles like having an unlisted number and being on the Do Not Call Register, that they hang up without even replying because they’ve already been convinced to vote for their party”.
Some critics have suggested that volunteers shouldn’t be so forceful and instead just be available to answer questions if someone wants to find out more about a party’s policies.
“Well that’s not going to work” said the AVO Spokesperson.
“Most of the volunteers don’t have the capacity to learn more than a few key phrases and they often stuff them up anyway.
“That’s why we encourage them to shout incomprehensibly so you can’t really tell what they’re saying.
“Plus, we don’t really want them to know too much about the actions and ideologies of the party they’re supporting in case they realise they’re promoting a bunch of muppets”.
