Filibuster Watch: You Can Make The Difference

November 21, 2008

Mac Zilber

Having Withdrawals from politics? Well, luckily for you, Georgia’s senate race is still undecided, and they want you to make calls and get out the vote. Why would anybody in their right mind bother making phone calls for a runoff senate race? Because it’s the most important senate race in many years. Allow me to explain.

It takes 41 votes in the senate to kill any bill procedurally, via the filibuster. Conversely, it takes 60 votes to break the filibuster. The Republicans, who have exercised the filibuster more times in the last two years than any party ever has, have 42 seats remaining in the senate, while the Democrats have 58 (now that it has been confirmed that Lieberman will stay in the caucus). There is a recount race up-for-grabs in Minnesota that has almost a 50% chance of going either way, and if Democrat Al Franken becomes the senator from Minnesota, the December 2 runoff race in Georgia will determine whether or not the Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the senate.

Republican senator Saxby Chambliss is slightly more popular than the Democratic candidate, Jim Martin, but in a runoff race, that doesn’t necessarily make all the difference. The average voter turnout in runoff races in Georgia is 15%, compared to 65% in the general election, and in this runoff we should expect to see a voter turnout closer to 25%, due to the importance of the race. This means that the winner of the campaign is not who gets the most support so much as it is who turns out their base the most. This is where you come in.

Making phone calls really doesn’t matter an enormous amount during a presidential general election. After all, popular vote margins of victory are in the millions, people knocking on doors is more effective, and everybody knows when the voting date is. Making phone calls for a senate runoff race, however, can be incredibly effective, as far fewer people know the date of the runoff or the early voting minutiae, and the runoff is likely to be decided by less than 50,000 votes.

Why would you want to make calls for a Georgia senate race you might ask? Because, if you’re a progressive, Jim Martin could be the difference between being able to get health care legislation through and not being able to, as that will likely take 60 senate votes to do. If you’re a conservative, Chambliss may be all that stands between the Democrats and unfettered control over all parts of Washington (except for the Courts). Either way, this is the most important senate runoff in decades.

For Information on how to phone bank for Jim Martin, you can email me at themuse [at] albanyhighcougar [dot] com. I can’t provide information on how to phone bank for Saxby Chambliss, but you can probably find it on Saxby.org.

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