Over the last month I’ve become involved with volunteering on a neighborhood team for the Barack Obama campaign. What I had thought would be a few hours of canvassing or phone banking has turned into nearly 30 hours a week of meetings, volunteer recruitment, phone banking, canvass working and data entry.
It’s been both fun and frustrating. The fun part stems from other people. I’ve been fortunate to make a good friend on the team and we work well together. We consistently outperform the other area teams in getting volunteers to phone bank and canvass. Jane gets all the credit for that because she’s tireless on the phone and then shows up to meetings and canvasses with a smile on her face ready to go knock on doors.
I’ve been doing the data, running lists of voters in neighborhoods/precincts, organizing the walk packets, sending the volunteers out on their shifts and compiling results. And generally being bossy and speaking my mind. (And knitting during meetings. Except when Jill Biden speaks.)
This last week, the neighborhood teams were reorganized in preparation for getting out the vote during the last 4 days of the campaign. Because Jane and I don’t easily fit into our new team geographically (and, well, because I bitched), we were left to run our own canvass this weekend.
Yesterday, we worked with 18 volunteers who went out and knocked on over 600 doors in our little town. To put it in perspective, that was more “door knocks” than the other two teams combined managed, both of which have many more team members.
I know this isn’t a competition, but I can’t help it. It’s in my nature. We recruited, organized and commanded volunteers from ages 15 to 71 who gave up the better part of their day to help elect a candidate. And we did better than the other guys. Allow me a little gloat, willya?
We had a mother go out with her 10-year-old son; an entire family with Mom, Dad, teenage son and two daughters; a father with his 6-year-old daughter; high school students and great-grandmothers. They all spent at least 3 hours walking neighborhoods to help us meet our goals.
We haven’t done anything that thousands of other people couldn’t do if they had the heart for it. In fact they’re doing it all over the country to elect Barack Obama as the next president. It’s just that in our own little corner, Jane and I did it better. Hee.
None of us are taking this election for granted. The numbers are still iffy on a national level and on a state level the polls show voters are split 50-50. We could still lose. It would break my heart but we could lose.
Today there’s more canvassing, more data, more phone calls. This week there will be more meetings, more phone calls.
Oh, and the frustrating part I mentioned? That’s people too. People who don’t show up, who don’t listen, who make a commitment and then blow it off. People being people.
Ten days to go.
Good for you! The Obama campaign created a phenomenal and massive volunteer network. You have my vote (but you knew that already)
Great job, Diane! I admire you for doing all that work. It’s especially important in Missouri where it could make a big difference. Not like here in Kansas, sigh. But we’re voting early this week, to add our votes for Barack. Unfortunately we haven’t persuaded my father in Columbia, the lifelong Republican who’ll vote for McCain. His and my mother’s votes will cancel each other out!