Rhode Island Reds

Normally I only report on elections in states that have universal helmet laws. That's where change is needed, so that's where my attention is.

But occasionally I make an exception. This would be the case for yesterday's special election in Rhode Island. It's an excellent example of how victory can often be "hidden in plain sight."

The Rhode Island is the bluest of the blue states. Democrats hold a 33-4 majority in the State Senate, and a 69-6 majority in the House. So it comes as no surprise that a Democrat won yesterday's election, garnering 62 percent of the vote. In anybody's book, that's a decisive victory.

You'd be crazy to think Republicans had any realistic chance of winning that special election. And you'd be wrong. That's because there's more to elections than winning percentages.

The rest of the story is that there was a mere 6 percent voter turnout, which means that 94% didn't vote. And the margin of victory was only 121 votes. In other words, if the Republicans had gotten 122 more votes, they would have won this election.

Woulda, coulda, shmouda. So how do you get 122 votes? Campaign work. And that takes campaign volunteers.

My hunch is that one hour of campaign work is worth about 5 votes. It doesn't matter if it's stuffing envelopes, making phone calls, knocking on doors, putting up signs, or working the polls. It all adds up.

So doing the math, about 24 man-hours of work could have made this a very different race. That could be 12 bikers working for two hours, or just two bikers working 12 hours each. That's really not a lot of time or effort, strictly speaking.

In comparison, how many biker activist man-hours go into holding a poker run? Having a cook-out? Holding a meeting? Probably a dozen ... maybe two. How about a state rally or a lobbying event? A whole lot more, easily. Perhaps hundreds.

But getting those 24 "biker-hours" takes more than math. Yes, it's very do-able. But to get there, it takes planning, communication, and experience. And that direction is the missing ingredient in the bikers rights community. For now, anyway.

By making campaign work a priority, and then getting good at doing it, bikers will start making progress. The goal is a biker-friendly legislative majority, regardless of which side of the aisle our friends are on.

But until then, victory will stay hidden in plain sight.

- RIDE2REPEAL@gmail.com