A guest post from my Dad, who on Saturday canvassed for Obama in Ohio:
I spent 4 hours today going door to door for Obama in Lorain County. Actually, the first 30+ minutes were spent in training the 40 or so of us who had signed up for the morning. (The local Obama office sends people out 14 times per week: every morning and every afternoon.) I overheard a report that the Kerry campaign didn't train volunteers in Ohio, and it was something of a disaster. That mistake isn't being repeated. The staff at the local office were very well prepared and were committed to training us, along with encouraging us and explaining how our efforts would make a difference.
When we arrived there were packets for each of us with our names, a map, a script -- which we were encouraged to ignore in favor of simply talking to voters -- information on how one can vote early, and lists of potential voters, with bar codes and addresses. These were people identified by the campaign as being undecided. No time was going to be spent talking to known McCain supporters, or to Obama supporters who were known to be fully committed, although those in the latter group will get phone calls reminding them to vote.
Our job was simple: Knock on the door, say "I'm a volunteer for the Obama/Biden campaign [editorial note: We didn't mention Palin by name, but saying "Obama/Biden" rather than just "Obama" reminded voters that there is a VP candidate on the other ticket] and I'm looking for John Doe (e.g.)", and ask John whether he had decided which candidate to support this fall. We were to record the response on a 1-5 (Obama-McCain) scale, while encouraging 1's to vote early -- voting began in Ohio over a week ago -- while recording what their voting plans were (i.e., vote in person or by mail) and to join in the volunteer effort, while encouraging 2's, 3's,and 4's to visit the Obama website. We also recorded things such as "Not home" or "moved" and which of several issues might be most important to the voter. But this was to be a short visit of perhaps a minute total. No arguing with any McCain sympathizers (I failed on that score once), no attempt to give political speeches -- although we were expected to be ready to state why we, personally, are supporting Obama, just a positive message, keeping Obama's name in front of undecided voters.
The goal of the local Obama office is to knock on the door of each of these undecided voters three times between now and the election. Once people are on Obama's side, they will be helped with getting to the Board of Elections to vote early, with the hope that 30% of Obama votes will be in the bank before election day. There are Obama lawyers at each county Board of Elections office, in case anyone's right to vote is challenged, with backup lawyers regionally, who are supported by a legal team at the state level, supported by a national legal team.
I was paired with a volunteer who had the even side of each street, while I had the odd side. By going to only the houses listed, we probably stopped at about 25% of the houses on our assigned streets. Moreover, we only asked to speak to specific voters, and were warned not to take the word of a spouse about how the other spouse was going to vote. It happened that most people were not home today (a beautiful fall Saturday), and we didn't bother to leave much campaign literature, since that isn't thought to be effective; instead, another canvaser will make a visit. My car-load -- which was set up before we all arrived this morning -- was sent to a politically conservative community, so we didn't come across as many Obama supporters as we might have in other towns, but we certainly identified many people who are leaning toward Obama.
I have to repeat that the organizers seemed to know exactly what they were doing, what we volunteers should be doing, and why it will work. The information we submitted at the end of the four hours will be fed into a computer and the database will be updated. I heard that there is an hour-by-hour plan for the GOTV effort scheduled for the last six days of the campaign. Indeed, host families are being sought for the out-of-state help that will arrive during the final week.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment