By Sergio A. Caval

When one thinks about the political campaign of a councilman a few thoughts come to mind. Maybe it starts with debates, or with press releases you might think. Nothing further from the truth. In the following few paragraphs I will paint a picture for you kind reader, about the experience. I have first hand knowledge because this candidate happens to be my dad. 

First of all this path could be divided in two parts, the internal elections that are for selecting the candidates representing the political party in which they are, and the external that are for deciding the occupation of councilman, for starting with the basics the candidate has to gather people that are in his circle and can help him with the work, either managing the money they can use, the amount of resources they have, people that can get contacts for the candidate and help him/her to make their objective of getting in the occupation of councilman, this is really important because normally people don’t have all the contacts or the enough amount of money to do the campaign by themselves due to not being wealthy enough, the people that search contacts are important because they can make the candidate have the benefit of knowing someone important or/and that can help them gathering votes easier which is the core of doing the effort of a candidate, then we have the people that organize the schedule which are some of the most important, this is because the people who organize can and have to tell when a meeting is possible and when is not posible to do because of lack of time, as a candidate you have to get people that are useful and represent a big help in the candidacy overview. As we know a candidate needs votes and in this case with the elections inside the party we have the party registration and the part of going to places for gaining votes, in which they register the id of the person in the app of the party for having a vote in the internal elections, part of this is also in the step of going to zones with a special density and potential in votes and try to win their acceptance and their approval which causes then to have at least a big part of the votes that could give the people of that terrain to the candidate that gains their trust more. Then with the people registered papers called as padrones are printed with lists of people. Finally the considered as last step before the election day, this last step consists on organize the padrones with numbers that come with a determined amount of them(for example the selections 039, 040, and 041 go in the same folder) and give it to people related to the candidate, this has the objective of identifying the people voting that could be possible known people, for contacting them and present the ideas of the candidate and that way the vote of that people can be guaranteed. After all the effort we have the election day in which the candidates are selected for the people, they need a minimum amount of votes to pass the elections for then facing the outside elections. 

As a conclusion the work of a campaign is way harder than what can be expected, it consists in way more things than just going to a place and win the sympathy of people, it also is something that requires a big capacity of planning movements either financial or of political purposes, the candidate itself can’t do everything alone and that is why is useful to have a group that covers the areas that the candidate can’t cover, being a way harder and complex work that what can be seen at first sight.