Clinton’s phone-bank efforts helped get out her voters

Fifteen-year-old Jaelyn Ellis used a corded phone for the first time on Saturday morning.

The clunky phone was hard to handle and bigger than the iPhone that she uses, Jaelyn said. The phone also had buttons that she had to press to dial a number. But the teen-age volunteer persevered, calling potential Democratic primary voters as she worked at a phone bank for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Saturday morning, roughly a dozen volunteers were placing calls to encourage South Carolinians to vote for Clinton at one of her “get-out-the-vote” offices, located at the former Kiki’s Chicken and Waffles location on Two Notch Road.

A group of canvassers also met for instructions at the office Saturday morning. In addition, Clinton had surrogates out at polls across the state, including Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, and former Govs. Jim Hodges and Dick Riley.

The campaign efforts all were part of an effort to encourage S.C. voters to show up at the polls and vote for the former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady.

As of Thursday, the Clinton campaign said it had made 1.6 million attempts to contact South Carolinians by calling them on the phone or knocking on residents’ doors.

Those efforts paid off on Saturday when Clinton won a landslide win over Sanders in the state’s Democratic primary.

Chris McCurry, the Two Notch phone-bank captain, began making calls for the campaign last spring. Since then, he said he has called thousands of S.C. voters.

Phone banking allows campaigns to reach out to more voters in a shorter period of time than knocking on doors.

On Saturday, McCurry, who said he volunteered for Clinton during her campaign eight years ago, directed volunteers to ask voters if they planned to vote for Clinton. The volunteers also encouraged supporters to take others with them to the polls to vote for Clinton.

Ellis, who is not old enough to vote, said she usually would spend her Saturday doing homework. But she wanted to get involved in the political process. So she was making calls to those old enough to vote and trying to get them to support Clinton.

Ellis said she supports Clinton because she thinks women should have an equal place in society as men, especially in the workplace.

Volunteer Jonathan Poverud has been involved in politics for decades. Poverud was a Florida delegate at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. He also phone-banked for a campaign in the ’90s, using a rotary-dial phone.

Poverud said he always has known voter turnout is important, adding if a campaign does not get its supporters out to vote, it will lose.

“We’ve got to win big,” said Jerry Emanuel of Columbia, who has been phone-banking for Clinton for months. A strong win in the Palmetto State will show the Bernie Sanders campaign that Clinton has momentum, Emanuel said.

“I want the rest of the country to know that South Carolina is serious about Hillary,” he said.

This story was originally published February 27, 2016 at 7:38 PM with the headline "Clinton’s phone-bank efforts helped get out her voters."