Today is 100 days until the election, and to mark the occasion the Obama people launched a new canvassing program. It's much more targeted: instead of standing outside a supermarket (which, as I learned today, the kids call "clipboarding") or hitting every house in a neighborhood, they had walk lists with people they think are unregistered voters. I don't know how they got this information, I think maybe it's people who aren't in the Board of Elections database.
Anyway they had this targeted list and sent us out with 2 purposes: first, to try and register these people; second to gather information. The walk list had all these codes we were supposed to circle, indicating if the person wasn't home, had moved away, refused to talk to us, was willing to talk, etc; are they registered or not; and who do they support. (Libertarians may be pleased to know that the Obama campaign considers Barr enough of a player to have his own codes: there were codes for Strong Obama, Lean Obama, Strong McCain, Lean McCain, Strong Barr, Lean Barr, Other, and Undecided.) At the end we turned the packet back in so they can use the information for GOTV in the fall.
There were four shifts today and S. and I did the noon shift. It was supposed to take 2 hours, and we had planned to go to the grand opening of the Durham office at 2. David Price was going to be there and I was hoping they'd have shirts and hats for sale. But it ended up taking more like 3 hours and so we missed the opening. Which was all for the best, as by then we were so bedraggled from the heat that we didn't feel like going to a crowded gathering.
We knocked on 30 doors, of which 20 were not home. Still we got 3 registrations and 1 volunteer. Again I was buoyed by the enthusiasm we encountered. A few people seemed annoyed to have a stranger knock on their door, but most people were happy that we were there. At our first stop the next-door neighbor saw us and came over to tell us she was a volunteer too. She went on and on about how excited she was and the different volunteering she's been doing. I'm sure we'll see her again at something in the next few months. Then later on we walked up to a house where the woman was wearing a "Durham for Obama" shirt. (The house was on our list because of her son, who is away at college.) That couple were so nice. They chatted with us about the political situation in northern Virginia, where they had just moved from, invited us inside (no one ever does that), offered us water and let S. use the bathroom. Nice pro-Obama couple in the solar neighborhood, you were our favorite people all day!
S. and I decided that in this heat, a shorter canvass is more effective. Because for the first hour or so we were really trying to engage people & draw them out. For instance our first registration, she started out saying "Well I don't really like Obama but I guess I'll vote for him because McCain is worse," and we talked to her for awhile about the issues that mattered to her (reproductive choice mainly) and by the end of the conversation she sounded much happier with Obama. As we got hotter and more tired (and sweatier!) we started losing parts of the script. The last few people we forgot to even ask who they supported; we were just like "Hi, are you registered? Ok thnx bye--" and onto the next one. I think that as long as it's Too Darned Hot, I'm going to quit at 2 hours no matter how much is done, and tell the office that I had something to do and had to cut it short. It's probably better to turn in an unfinished packet that they can add to the next canvass, than to give them incomplete information.
I didn't remember to ask if they had swag for sale at the office. But S. had a shirt which she had ordered off the website, and she said it had arrived really fast. So this evening I went to the site and ordered some stuff to wear while canvassing: a shirt and a hat and a couple of different pins. A hat is nice to have because you can't wear sunglasses (nobody wants to talk to you if they can't see your eyes) and I hate having the sun in my eyes. It gives me a headache. I won't wear all the gear at the same time of course, that would look ridiculous. It will just be nice to have some variety since it looks like I'm going to be doing a lot of this over the next three months.
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