We arrived in Burlington, Vermont in the early evening and started petitioning right away. For a few days there it snowed, but the petitions stayed dry enough so we had successful days of petitioning.
On the coldest day of the trip (15 degrees but a wind-chill of 3 degrees) we lost a lot of petitioning time trying to warm up, and people seemed less likely to stop and talk. Nonetheless, that day we were able to get almost 500 signatures. On the warmest day (60 degrees) there were many more people on Church Street and most were willing to stop and talk, so we were able to get over 600 signatures that day. One day was an Occupy Vermont General Assembly, and everyone in attendance signed.
During our days in Burlington we became fixtures on the main strip of stores. People began to recognize us, bring us food, and invite us to their house for dinner or offer to take us out for drinks. We were able to have some great conversations with people about socialism and were able to make some good contacts. Thursday evening, we received a “Join the PSL” online form from a person in Burlington.
Ultimately, we got over 2,000 petition signatures. While they only require 1,000 valid signatures, these signatures must be validated by the clerk in the town or city in which the person is registered – and there are 255 towns, cities and other types of political units in Vermont. In a state of just over 625,000 people, this means most of the towns and cities are very small. Even while petitioning in only one city, Burlington, we collected signatures from over 100 locales in the state.
We found that most women and young people would stop and sign if we focused on the fact that it would help Peta as a young woman to get on the ballot.
We did encounter some Democratic Party supporters who were worried about us taking votes from Obama, but this did not stop us from getting large numbers of signatures.
In the end, we did so well that we finished ahead of schedule. Despite encountering some challenges due to the weather, we far exceeded our goals and expectations for the trip and were excited to have been able to get the VotePSL 2012 petitioning effort off to such a great start.
