Handing out leaflets

Split up by twos and threes. Stand visible to people and spot them at 50 to 10 feet away. You can spot the receptive folks with simple eye contact. Approaching people from behind will most likely end in rejection. Since there are 2 or thre of you per group, stand with your backs to each other, so all voters are approaced from the front.

Hold the flyer so that passers by can see the heading and say, "Go ahead" in a friendly, not intrusive way. If they slow to take it (eye contact! smile! OK not like a Stepford Wife!) and ask something like, "Excuse me, Do you have a minute?". Smile. Relax. You may get many rejections, Don't take it personally. Lost of people don't want to think about politics. We don't really need them at this point. Those are the type that join as things gain success. An important point once someone stops is, if they answer your "How do you feel about..." question, listen to what the other person says, even if they wander off topic, so you can hear about what is important to them. If you are very familiar with our platform, you can point out what we support that they care about, and how it relates to what that voter wants to see happen. You can then ask them how confident they are that their current party will vote the way the want them to. If they don't know, you can let them know.

Very important to consider when talking to people is: Be urbane, humane and not pushy. It does not work at all just to machine gun feed the info. Leafleting is not for some personality types. Painfully shy people may suffer attempting to do it. Don't feel bad. You can support the party in other ways. For you outgoing types, familiarize yourself with the the party platform, and rehearse your talking points. Just like an actor learning lines. Don't just say it in your head. Go ahead and talk to yourself. For talking points see: "Political argument support"

Don't pack too much information into your leaflets. Make the font is large enough to read easily. Include all relevant links. Use headings. Use optimistic language.

Always, always, be polite. It's OK to be emphatic, just don't be insulting, or sound frustrated.

Perhaps we can wear Pirate Pirate T shirts so that people can spot us easily. Better not to leaflet too close to other groups' or businesses' leafletters. One reason for this is, many folks will just grab a leaflet to easily navigate the gauntlet then discard them nearby. (Raises hand, "Guilty!")This makes a mess, and if we want to make friends not enemies locally, we will have to do some tidying up when we are done for the day.

According to the Swede Pirates, you can leaflet about 100 slips an hour with 2 people.