I ran for public office this summer, which I’ll discuss in more detail in a later post—but first I wanted to share a few statistics from the campaign trail.
| Total number of homes that I personally doorbelled: | 8,283 | |
| …where at least one person was at home: | 2,326 | |
| Total number of votes I received: | 2,247 | |
| Total number of house pets that escaped: | 1 | |
| Total number of wild animals sighted: | 2 | |
| Total number of Trump supporters encountered: | 3 | |
| Total number of times I was thrown out of a house because of my political views: | 1 | |
| …on abortion: | 0 | |
| …on gun control: | 0 | |
| …on Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders: | 0 | |
| …on Donald Trump: | 0 | |
| …on whether pit bulls are more dangerous than other breeds of dogs:1 | 1 | |
| Total number of Pokemon caught: | 1 | |
| Percentage of Seattle homes that still have their Christmas lights up in July: | ~10% | |
| Percentage of Seattle homes with a “no soliciting” sign: | ~ 5% | |
| …“no soliciting or canvassing”:2 | ~ 1% | |
| …“Members of this household will listen to solicitors for $50/minute, payable in advance. By ringing the doorbell you agree to these terms”:3 | 1 | |
| According to the woman who answered the door, total number of 43rd LD candidates (out of a possible eight)4 who had personally doorbelled her house in Wallingford: | 5 | |
| Age of the oldest voter I doorbelled: | 98 | |
| Total number of other candidates that I ran into while doorbelling:5 | 1 | |
| Total number of Mormon missionaries I ran into while doorbelling: | 2 | |
| Total number of University of Washington law professors doorbelled: | 3 | |
| Total number of times I wrote the words “Sorry I missed you!” on the back of a flyer: | ~5,000 | |
- It’s kind of a long story. [↩]
- For what it’s worth: soliciting is commercial activity (i.e., asking people for money in exchange for goods or services). Going door-to-door to ask people for their vote is called canvassing, and going door-to-door to talk about religion is called proselytizing. Any time I saw a “no canvassing” (or “no politics”) sign, I skipped that house. [↩]
- I was so disappointed that no one was home at this house. [↩]
- Really it was out of six, since two of the candidates didn’t do any doorbelling. [↩]
- I managed to doorbell a Brady Walkinshaw fundraising event. The closest I came to running into another candidate in my race was the day I came within about half an hour of crossing paths with Sameer Ranade, based on the sheer number of Madison Park houses that had his flyer stuck to their front doors. [↩]