“Hi, I’m Zach! I’m out here knocking on doors for Tenille Bonoguore, who is running to represent you in Ward 7. Do you have any questions for her, or concerns that you’d like her to know about…” is now a sentence I have said more than possibly any other.

Ontario had municipal elections on October 22^nd. I looked at the bios of my local candidates, emailed all of them to find out more about their platforms, met with two of them, and ultimately decided that I wanted to help Tenille. Soon after that, I had been drafted to help manage canvassing efforts (although my colleague Tanya did more of that work than I did) and I was out knocking on doors again.

I knocked on countless doors and talked to an incredible variety of people. I don’t even know how many times I went out canvassing, but it was lots. More, I think, than the last time I did this.

This blog post outlines the differences (I found) between municipal politics and provincial politics, as well as the difference between volunteering for a campaign and being part of the core campaign team. I hope it can be informative for other people looking to get involved in politics any level.

The first thing I should mention about municipal campaigns is that they are (in many cities; Toronto is one notable exception) much smaller than campaigns for provincial or national government. If you’re volunteering for one, you will probably frequently meet and talk with the candidate. This was a big contrast to my volunteering at the provincial level, where I met the candidate only once (and that was brief), despite regularly canvassing on her behalf.

This, along with the non-partisan nature of many municipal elections means that volunteering at the municipal level is a much better way to get your voice heard. When there’s no party line to toe, your perspective (or a voter’s perspective as relayed by you) can change someone’s mind and lead to a (potential) city councillor voting differently.

Money also goes a lot further in municipal elections. Waterloo had a spending limit of around $12,000 (and I don’t know how many candidates even hit that). This means that donating a couple hundred dollars could make you one of the largest donors to a candidate. I don’t recommend this as a way of influencing policy – I didn’t see anyone act differently because of who donated and I sure as heck didn’t see donors get any sort of special “access”. Trying to get “access” is more or less pointless anyways; municipal boundaries are often small enough that a simple email is all you need to get real, detailed answers right from a candidate (or sitting counsellor).

That said donating is a great way to support a candidate you care about and help them get their message out.

The smaller scale of municipal campaigns also means that any past experience will probably make you the resident expert in something. When you volunteer for a provincial campaign, you’re a small cog in a big machine. When you volunteer municipally, it’s not like that.

Although not all campaigns need your help to the same degree. Incumbents almost never lose races municipally. Only one incumbent (out of 4 who stood for re-election) lost in Waterloo. In Cambridge, no incumbent counsellor lost re-election. Incumbent counsellors are also more likely to have an experienced existing team, potentially limiting the responsibility you could hold. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing! There’s lots to be said for learning skills from more experienced people.

Still, if your main goal is to maximize your contribution towards the election of candidates who you trust, you should focus on open seat races (a seat where there’s no incumbent, due to retirement, scandal, etc.). Second to open seat races might be challengers who are unusually good candidates (e.g. they have extensive community ties and recognition, or other political experience).

(This is speculative. Local conditions may vary. You, or a sitting counsellor you trust might be best positioned to figure out where you can do the most good)

The ease in which you can find yourself in a position of responsibility in a municipal campaign comes with one drawback if you accept it – it can be stressful to be responsible. I don’t want to discourage anyone from getting involved, but I did find even my limited leadership role a source of stress.

From my point of view, three things make being part of a campaign team stressful:

1. It's a lot of work; the emotion work of listening to people's concerns can be emotionally draining and the walking physically taxing. This leads to you trying to do admin work when tired and worn-out.
2. The outcome is uncertain. Many people like certainty and the combination of caring about a specific outcome a lot and being unsure if it will come about can wear you down.
3. The buck stops with you. When you're a simple canvasser, you just need to show up; everything else is taken care of. When people asked me to do things, they wouldn't get done unless I took care of them.

Now there were two further factors that probably made this more stressful for me than the average volunteer. First, I was working around my blogging French practice. If I was exhausted from campaigning and didn’t work on them, I’d beat myself up about it. People who respond to exhaustion in healthier ways (hint: any other way) wouldn’t have this stressor.

Second, one of the other candidates may have been engaging in underhanded tactics. As a young idealist, I took this rather hard and wasted a lot of energy being angry about it.

Now, I want to be clear that me being such a ball of stress wasn’t the fault of the campaign or anyone else in it.

I read an article a few months ago (that I’m now no longer able to find) about a campaign run and almost entirely staffed by women in California. The women who worked on it talked about how supportive the environment was and how useful it was to have things like “what are times you need off for childcare?” and “please let us know if you feel like you’re taking on too much” asked explicitly at the start.

Tenille’s campaign wasn’t run entirely by women, but it was pretty close (there was only myself and her husband on the core team). And just like the campaign I read about in California, Tenille and Zivy (our campaign manager) did an excellent job checking in with everyone and doing their best to make sure no one took on too much. If I pushed myself past the point I should have, it wasn’t for lack of them trying to create a campaign that didn’t encourage that.

I don’t want to get all gender essentialist here, but working on this campaign made me genuinely believe that women might bring something important and different to the political process. Previously, I’d wanted to see gender balance in elected representatives for basic fairness reasons. Now I find myself even more committed to it.

I think there were two things that made the stress all worth it. The first was getting Tenille elected. I was continually floored by just how good she will be as a counsellor. She knows so much about how Waterloo’s weird two-level government works, has been very involved in the community, and has a journalist’s instinct for hard questions. The second upside is all the other people I met.

There’s this branch of decision theory called functional decision theory that claims the key component of decision making is the algorithm that people use to make decisions. Functional decision theory holds that you can coordinate with someone without talking to them, as long as you can make an accurate guess as to what their decision-making algorithm will be.

This is relevant to campaigning, because you can coordinate with other cool people with similar beliefs to all end in the same room. All you have to do is figure out what candidate they’ll volunteer for and get on her campaign team. Then you’ll all show up in that candidate’s living room, drink coffee, and figure out how to get her elected.

(This can also be a general piece of advice; if you want to meet people you’ll find cool, go do whatever you think a 10% cooler version of you would do. Being part of a core campaign team works so well for this because you’ll spend a lot of time with the other members and be in a social context that provides lots of stuff for you all to talk about. This beats being a canvassing volunteer, where you’ll only see the same people intermittently and have less of a context that encourages mingling.)

Most of the people I met through the campaign are in a rather different stage of life than I am; they aren’t all young techies like most of my other friends. Many of them had kids. Some of them even had jobs outside of tech! Despite the fact that our lives looked rather different, I found I really liked them. They were universally kind, thoughtful, and willing to listen to other perspectives.

(It is rare that I get to hear multiple people talk about why that had kids, what they expected to get out of it, and how they were surprised, but it turns out I really enjoy it when I do. Knowing people at other stages of life is great because you can get advice about your stage of life.)

We had a potluck and reunion a month after the campaign was over and I found myself giddy afterwards; it wasn’t just the stress of the campaign that made me like them. They’re just cool people.

The social scientist Jonathon Haidt wrote in The Righteous Mind that many of the experiences people highlight as the most meaningful in their life happen in the context of some shared struggle. Whatever the depredations, working together for some important cause feels good. In my last post on canvassing, I also quoted Hannah Arendt, who talked about the “extreme pleasure” of working in a group. She was right. Haidt is right as well. Canvassing, volunteering, trying to get someone elected – these are all things that you will look back on and feel proud about.

It’s for these reasons – and because politics needs good, dedicated, decent people – that I recommend becoming involved at any and all levels of government. You don’t have to run yourself. There are plenty of excellent candidates out there who need help, money, and time. If you’re new to politics, consider volunteering to knock on doors. If you’re an old hand, consider taking on a leadership role.

You might change the world. And you might make amazing friends.