Integrity in Communication

There's an old campaign strategy whereby candidates or their volunteers go door to door and - if they don't catch you at home - they leave a brochure with a hand-written "sorry I missed you" note.

Here's what bothers me, and I know that it's a relatively small thing in the grand scheme of things: those "sorry I missed you" notes shouldn't be written unless the resident's door was actually knocked on.

I saw it during the 2006 campaign, and I've seen it more during this campaign, where I end up canvassing in the same neighbourhood as the volunteers of one of my opponents, and those individuals are dropping flyers in mailboxes with the hand-written note. They haven't knocked on the resident's door and tried to catch them at home; they've simply dropped a brochure in a mailbox and moved onto the next house.

I've had residents tell me that they can't figure out how they missed other candidates when they were home all day.

Candidates shouldn't be pretending they were at someone's door. If they just want to drop brochures quickly and keep moving, then do so, but don't imply that you tried to speak to them personally when you didn't actually try.

If I write "sorry I missed you" on a brochure, it will be because I actually tried to catch you by knocking on your door. That's what I consider to be integrity on communication.