A Unicorn (Or Two) on the Front Porch: There Really Were Undecided Voters

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Kim Sillen
November 11, 2024

I’m writing this six days before Election Day, not knowing what the outcome will be. I’ll cut to the chase—I haven’t yet written about door-knocking because I didn’t want to go door-knocking. Or really, I didn’t want to go by myself this time around, or waste my time when I reasoned there might be more effective, time-efficient activities. In a race so tight, so close to the election, I figured it was unlikely to find anyone who had not yet made up their mind.

Sure, the media focuses on the elusive Undecided Voter, but it seemed to me like nobody actually knows these people. Earlier in the season, I sent out a group text to gauge the plausibility of getting a friend group together; it wasn’t happening. Going it alone didn’t seem worth it.

Then reality hit me. With the race so tight, musing about time-efficiency and companionship was a luxury I couldn’t afford. If I wanted to leave no stone unturned in an attempt to help protect American democracy and reproductive rights, door-knocking I would go.

I signed up for a canvassing trip to Long Island and hoped for the best, slim odds in convincing anybody of anything. I met a friendly, like-minded woman while waiting to board the bus at our meeting spot and we agreed to be canvassing partners. 

One of our goals was to campaign for the Congressional challenger in the district where we were going. We were told by our group leaders that if only two more people were swayed to vote for her in every neighborhood where she was on the ballot, she would win, and the outcome would have a reverberating impact. This sounded like an attainable goal that my partner, Anne and I could at least attempt. Another goal was to convince voters to vote YES on New York state’s nonpartisan Proposal 1, also known as the Equal Rights Amendment.

I write this partly as a reminder to myself as much as an affirmation to anybody else who may read it, that sincere conversations rarely go to waste. Anne and I stated out tag-teaming  together at the first houses on the canvassing list to get a feel for it. We then split up, covering opposite sides of the street and reconvening after clusters of houses.

Encountering many houses where no one is home is a given, and at first, our efforts seemed inconsequential. But it was a gorgeous fall day, and there was nothing to lose.

Then it happened. After I rang the bell at a house with a  front porch, a man his late 70s or early 80s appeared at the door. He returned my smile but answered my question in the negative in a heavy accent; no, he was not planning to vote. Upon asking him why, he opened the door and joined me on the porch.

“You can’t believe any of them!” he exclaimed. “They all say they’re going to lower your taxes, and then they don’t.” I replied that one of the top platform issues of the Congressional candidate I was campaigning for was removing a particular tax that residents of this town knew by name.

He softened a bit and sighed, telling me that he had come to the U.S. decades ago from an authoritarian dictatorship and became a citizen. “I’m so afraid that America is going to turn into that,” he said, with a sad weariness on his face.

“That’s exactly why it’s so important to vote!” I answered. This moment wasn’t in the script, but I couldn’t let it pass by. I gently reminded him that one of the candidates admired and emulated authoritarians, while the other advocated for a liberal democracy. Wanting to tread lightly on the subject, I switched gears to an unlikely topic that I believed would resonate: reproductive rights.

“However you feel about abortion,” I started, “I have the feeling you don’t want the government telling people what they HAVE to do with their bodies, right?” I saw recognition in his eyes.

“Can you give me the address for early voting?” he asked, afterwards copying it down in memo pad. “I’m going to go now,” he told me. I felt I had reason to believe him.

Across the street, Anne was having a successful conversation of her own. The man who opened the door had opposing views, but he graciously acknowledged that his wife was home and was undecided. I arrived just as she came to the door.

The woman proclaimed that she didn’t like stating her political views to others, but Anne was on a roll. Like I had, she gently broached reproductive rights, and we both noticed that the woman’s body language conveyed agreement.

While we will never know for sure if and how the two undecided voters voted,

if I can trust my gut on anything, I have reason to believe we affected at least one of them, maybe both. To me, that’s a risk worth a Saturday, especially when democracy and body autonomy are at stake. I’ll remember that earlier next time.

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Author: Kim Sillen is the Deputy Director of Creative Service at NYC DOT. She cofounded The Largest Generation (now See Gen Z Vote), a youth voter advocacy internship for college students in 2020, which created digital campaigns and infographics for colleges and organizations across the U.S. that were looking to reach potential Gen Z voters. More recently, she partnered with Lift Every Vote, which utilized her research on preregistration. [email protected] 

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