More voter registration today. I thought it was going to be more canvassing targeted households like we did on Saturday, but I was wrong. Apparently the data in the walk lists wasn't as good as they had expected, so the "clipboarding" is still more effective for now. I'm a little bummed because walking around a neighborhood is more fun. Standing outside a supermarket isn't my favorite thing, but what the heck, it won't kill me. I was at the Food Lion on Roxboro Rd. an hour and got three registrations, not bad.
On a lark I started out in front of the Wal-mart in the same strip mall. Just as expected, it took 5 minutes for a manager to emerge and run me off. He wasn't rude, just said "I'm sorry, you can't ask people to register to vote here." I left immediately, and noted that he stood outside and watched me go until I was completely out of their parking lot. I wonder what they have against democracy?
The Durham Obama office is open ... sort of. With no phone or internet yet, they're leaving one person in the office to greet visitors and the rest hang at the cafe down the block to get work done. The one weird thing is that when I was talking to the volunteer coordinator on the phone, she told me that she's in charge of my precinct so I'll be dealing mainly with her. I missed that at first, didn't really understand what she meant. Then later tonight I got an email from the campaign with this weekend's volunteer events. The email included the names of the volunteer coordinators and lists of the precincts each one covers. She was right: she's in charge of my precinct, 37. I guess she must have looked me up in their database after I contacted her.
"I wonder what they have against democracy?"
In case that wasn't a completely rhetorical question: Wal-Mart is one of America's foremost violators of employee rights laws and one of its fiercest opponents of unions. Wal-Mart is dedicated to the defeat of Democrats--and, for that matter, democrats--at every level of US governance.
After writing this, I read that Wal-mart has been caught pulling employees into mandatory meetings where they are basically told, "we're not telling you how to vote, but we don't want you to vote Democrat!"