approaching the end of campaigning

I have four more days on the campaign trail in Va. It's really cranking up in the office. The excitement from last week happened on Friday when all the staff was out at training for the morning. They asked me to essentially run the office and coordinate the volunteers. That was a fair amount to ask, since each new volunteer who comes in and has never been trained requires about 10 minutes of training, but there wasn't anyone greeting people at the front desk for a while, our internet connection was down so I couldn't look up who people should be working for or any other information, and didn't have anything for data entry folks to do. Thankfully there was only one data entry person who came in. I was so happy to see the staff when they showed back up at 2:00!

Yesterday I was in charge of handling all the volunteers who came in and training all the new phone bankers. I ended up just training phone bankers for about three hours straight. We had so many people, we would batch them. I'd train four people while the next group accumulated and then start on them. It was grueling, and I messed up some important things, but they got most of the idea and will hopefully come in again. It was impressive that almost every phone in the office was in use from about 1:30 - 7:30. I wouldn't be surprised if it stays like that through election day.

So, what are we doing? Last week was a big push for canvassers and voter registrations. I went out canvassing twice. Saturday was brutal, with ~90 degree weather. I was drenched in sweat the entire time. I did love the republicans who happily answered my questions about who they were voting for and then offered me a glass of water! I also love the people who ask me to pass information on to Barack. I'll get right on that! Then there were the two people who said they would come and volunteer as soon as Barack started attacking the Republicans back. And there are the volunteers who do crazy things. Some volunteers are super stars who will hit 60 doors or call 100 numbers and get 10 people to sign up for specific activities. Then there are the not so good volunteers. Rudy had four canvassers on Sunday who hit an _average_ of 6 doors. Not so stellar. Granted it was HOT. Or the volunteers who record data in a particularly interesting way, like recording someone as refusing to talk to them and deceased. Do the dead give us lip too? Or the volunteers who take up thirty minutes on the phone with their field organizer getting step-by-step instructions on how to use the internet at home.

The funniest people I met canvassing were these two white guys, on wearing a Nascar shirt, both with big beer guts. They were sitting in the living room with the door open, no air conditioning, and oil lamps lighting the room but he occasional bright flash of light from the light bulbs. Turns out, they were Republicans who hated McCain and were voting for Obama. They had strange schedules because they were bounty hunters who would go find people for debt collection agencies and look scary and try to get money out of them. They could get a call at any time that and have to leave for Montana. They were happy to host volunteers, but there was this issue with the electricity. See, the guy I was talking to had inherited half the house, and his aunt had inherited the other half. He was trying to get the utilities in his name, but it was difficult because he didn't have full ownership. I feel like there was a lot to that story that I didn't get! Needless to say, I didn't write down that they'd host volunteers.

It's also funny how many people want Barack paraphernalia - buttons, bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc. People are mad that we don't stock them. MAD! We finally did get 30 bumper stickers in and about 100 buttons. The bumper stickers sold out in five minutes. I'm not sure why we don't stock them. Perhaps we want to focus on working with volunteers instead of selling stuff, but it seems like we could make money if we sold them at double the cost on the website. That's a whole bunch of $10 donations right there. Also, we can ask each one of those people who come through the door if they want to volunteer. I don't understand the decision to not sell that stuff.

For those of you who like data, I watched a training put on by Democracy for America on getting out the vote (http://www.democracyforamerica.com/nightschool the how to increase voter turnout one). He was talking about controlled studies that had been done on what affect different techniques had on getting people to the poles. It turns out that direct mail is nearly useless, literature dropped at a door has some effect, robocalls are useless, paid phone banking is nearly useless, volunteer phone banking is somewhat useful, volunteers at your door is definitely useful, sending people mail telling them their history of voting and saying that you will track whether they vote this election is quite affective. Telling them you will track it and tell them and their neighbors is more affective. Text messages work for now, but that might lose its effect as the novelty wears off. Nobody has studied yard signs.