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Comment by cwkoss | Hacker News Reader

Door to door solicitation is obnoxious even if the people are polite, IMO.

Sure, but not in the same league compared to sellers calling over the phone in my experience.

I guess it comes down to the effective wanna answer the door to not wanna answer the door ratio. I don't want to miss someone I'd like to meet to avoid the 1/X chance of a seller. As sibling comment noted that ratio probably depends on local circumstances.

Someone in person is a lot harder to ignore if they get pushy.

Does solicitation include political lobbying?

Yes

Solicitation is the act of offering, or attempting to purchase, goods and/or services.

Can you explain how talking to my neighbors about important social issues falls under that criteria?

No, because if you're going to try and start that conversation I'm not going to answer the door. ;)

You sound like a pleasant person to be around. /s

A neighbor talking to their neighbors about actual important political issues isn’t typically what people don’t like.

People they don’t know trying to convince them they should care about a political issue they don’t care about or they are terrible and bad people is what people don’t like. It’s usually the second one, even if someone thinks it’s the first one.

So you only want to talk to neighbors you already know? Isn't that a bit insular?

I think if you want to live in a community, you have to be open to having conversations with your coinhabitants about polemic issues. Anything less is unkind.

Regardless, persistent lobbying from a stranger is no more solicitation than softer lobbying from a friend.

In practice, this is rarely a problem. The civically inactive tend to congregate; communities with a strong civic sense, on the other hand, understand why organization is important. (TL; DR If you get mad about neighbors, including those you don't know, trying to talk to you about issues, you're the root cause of what you might complain about your community.)

Nice try. I’d say this manipulative BS is the real root cause.

People in battleground areas often have buses of activists brought in from neighboring states to do door to door canvassing. Among other things.

Thanks for calling everyone who wants to be able to cast their vote without active harassment from people with no stake in their community or reputation to worry about first ‘the root of the problem’ though.

If by battleground areas you mean swing states, then the national popular vote could reduce that cross-state migration and canvassing that we see so much of.

Still, does someone in Georgia not have a stake in whether Florida lines their roads with radioactive agricultural waste? In our industrialized, globalized economy stakes reach much farther than a neighborhood or city level.

Claiming that any discussion of that sort is ‘friendly neighborhood discussion’ is the height of disingenuous bullshit. Which is my point.

> Claiming that any discussion of that sort is ‘friendly neighborhood discussion’

Bit of a straw man to quote something nobody in this thread said.

Nobody said civic duty is champagne and French fries. Just that rejecting it has a cost, and the people who cause that cost have a tendency to congregate. That, in turn, frees up resources for the communities who bother organizing.

Someone literally equated folks from other states as having similar stakes as actual neighbors. This isn’t strawmanning.

And you’re the one that keeps beating ‘civic duty’ when I’m pointing out the disingenuous and manipulative nature of a lot of the current political strategies - including fake grass roots ‘neighbors’.

Which people have a right to ignore, despite your statements otherwise.

Personally, I’d argue they have an actual civic duty to ignore or even ostracize folks doing that, as that kind of manipulative lying is what poisons actual civic discussion.

> People in battleground areas often have buses of activists brought in from neighboring states to do door to door canvassing

These aren't neighbors. We're talking about neighbors.

> everyone who wants to be able to cast their vote without active harassment from people with no stake in their community

Your neighbors have a stake in your community. It's almost part and parcel with the definition. Refusing to engage with them because you assume to know better obviously impacts the community's strength, cohesiveness and civic integrity.

People recognize their neighbors.

I'd be willing to make a carve out for the candidates themselves or entirely uncompensated volunteers.

Campaign staff are not welcome.

Does it include religious preaching?

That would be an interesting case in the US. A country deeply steeped in God.

As is website to website solicitation

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