After a few loud knocks, a scruffy man in a black Steelers T-shirt emerges from behind his front door. There’s a slight scowl on his face, perhaps because his football game-viewing has been interrupted.

Still, the two ladies on the other side of the door make their pitch, asking whether he is a registered voter.

“Oh yeah, I vote,” the man replies quickly.

“Then are you voting this next week for the primaries?” they ask.

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The response that follows seems to baffle yet not completely surprise them.

“No, I’m lazy.”

His lackluster attitude is precisely the mentality that Action in Montgomery is up against.

Like many other groups around the state and the nation, AIM’s members are tirelessly working to sign citizens up to vote.

Their “Get Out The Vote” efforts are slightly different, though. More concentrated. Less willy-nilly.

Instead of holding rallies to encourage all voters to head to the polls or rallying supporters of a particular political party to participate, this non-partisan consortium of 32,000 Montgomery County churchgoers is targeting just two precincts in the county with the lowest voter turnouts and propelling people in those areas to vote in the primaries.

Particularly over the past week members have gone door to door in their chosen Gaithersburg and Burtonsville neighborhoods asking residents to sign pledge cards vowing to make their voices heard on Tuesday. Along with the cards, they hand out information sheets with AIM’s top suggestions for Montgomery County improvements along with “yes” or “no” responses from major county candidates about whether they agree.

AIM president Alisa Glassman said the group has been letting citizens know where they and the candidates stand on social issues for years but the approach of taking the data directly to their doors is new this election.

“There are a lot of people who don’t vote in the primaries, but really it’s where a lot of decisions are made in a state like Maryland,” she said.

Most people don’t know that, though, Glassman said. That’s why her group’s attention is on September, not November.

In the two precincts with which they’re focusing, their goal is to increase turnout from a wretched 22 percent to 47 percent.

“We want to be an example,” she said. “If we can do it here, it can be done anywhere.”

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com