Harvard Students for Harris, Harvard Dems Scale Back Canvassing Trip After Bus Cancellations

After one bus canceled and another failed to arrive, Harvard College Democrats and Harvard Students for Harris cut their 48-member crew down to 16 for a 24-hour canvassing trip to Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The group drove to Philadelphia in three rental cars and a personal car after their first chartered bus canceled on Thursday evening and a replacement did not show up on Friday morning.

Students spent Saturday shuttling around Philadelphia’s Upper Darby suburb for a four-hour canvassing shift, knocking on around 550 doors.

“The experience was a whirlwind — we got into Philly at 2 a.m. I think I got three hours of sleep,” said Carter G. Demaray ’25, a member of both organizations. “We went out the next morning and canvassed and then we left at 6 p.m., and I got back to my dorm at 2 a.m.”

The group — which originally launched as Harvard for Biden in February before rebranding in September— focuses specifically on the top of the ticket but has worked with Harvard College Democrats to run voter contact events for down-ballot candidates this semester.

The Pennsylvania trip was a larger mobilization of Democratic college student organizations in the Northeast. But in the face of last-minute travel mishaps, the Harvard group was forced to pivot.

“We were on the ground scrambling to figure out what exactly to do with this driver not showing up,” Harvard College Democrats Co-President Tova L. Kaplan ’26 said. “We called basically every bus company in the Northeast, and there were no drivers available.”

After a 6-hour delay, the groups formed a new plan: 16 students would drive to Pennsylvania, while the rest would stay in Cambridge to run phone banks from campus.

Just hours after arriving in Philadelphia, students headed to the field office to receive canvassing advice from Rep. Mary G. Scanlon (D-Pa.), who, per Kaplan, was impressed by the group’s dedication.

According to Kaplan, the group then embarked on a mix of persuasion canvassing, which involves convincing voters to support specific candidates, and “get-out-the-vote” canvassing, which aims to help them send their ballots in.

Canvassers used MiniVAN, an app for Democratic campaigns, to target “an area where elections can be won or lost in a district by just a few votes,” Kaplan said.

“I was talking with some people who now feel a little bit better about Kamala’s chances in Pennsylvania because we were in the suburbs of Philly, which are obviously very critical in the upcoming election, and we have seen a lot of support for Kamala,” Demaray said.

Ahead of the Nov. 5 election, both groups plan to continue their canvassing efforts, including trips to Georgia and Maine next weekend and a return to Pennsylvania on Nov. 2.

Correction: October 21, 2024

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Harvard for Harris organized the canvassing trip to Pennsylvania. In fact, the group’s name is Harvard Students for Harris.