This will give you chills.
I actually made it home last night by 8:30 after 12 hours. As a dry run for Election Day yesterday went incredibly well. We had an average number of glitches: a last minute change in the precincts we’re covering, no Internet connection, wrong directions to one neighborhood and then a mid-afternoon invasion by another group who had been promised the use of the same space. Since they were making phone calls to teachers on behalf of Democrats we made room.
We received the day’s walk packets at 9:15 and the first volunteers were due 45 minutes later. Everyone on the team pitched in to help get the office space organized and the packets prepared for the first shift. It took us a shift or two to sort out the process but by the end of the day we know how we need the next three days to go. We reassigned some people to fill slots we didn’t know we needed and realized that we probably need more help on Election Day just for administrative stuff.
We had fewer volunteers show up than promised and consequently our door knocks weren’t as high as I had hoped. We managed about 1200 addresses which isn’t horrible, just not what I wanted.
There were reports that John McCain’s campaign was also working the area but there weren’t any sightings beyond three cars plastered with McCain-Palin signs.
Today it’s more of the same only we won’t run a morning shift. Instead we’ll have a regional meeting to review yesterday and how we can improve.
The best part of yesterday? I’d been home for about 20 minutes when the phone rang. I assumed it was a teammate with a question about today. It turned out to be Barack Obama calling from Springfield, Missouri calling the neighborhood teams in the battleground states. He rallied the troops with words of thanks and encouragement and reminded everyone they can sleep in 72 hours.
The number of people on the call?
20,000 neighborhood volunteers.
I have hope.
