The election countdown drumbeat was pounding well before 9 a.m. this past Wednesday at the Obama Campaign for Change office on North High Street in Columbus Ohio. The small storefront office is one of four in Columbus and over 80 statewide (list and clickable map).
Shoehorned between a tattoo parlor and poster emporium across from the Ohio State University (OSU) campus, the place was packed with student volunteers, ready for the kickoff of their Get Out the Vote (GOTV) final push before Election Day next Tuesday .
Ignored were classes, mid-terms, even the well-documented fact that young people don't wake up before noon. Morgan Aronson, the volunteer coordinator, set the day's plan in motion: Recruiting volunteers across campus in the morning and door-to-door canvassing in the afternoon. Carrying chairs, rolls of posters and stickers, clipboards with sign-up sheets and several tattered Obama yard signs, a group headed for the big green Oval at the heart of the OSU campus. Led by students Caitlyn Seitz and Thomas Kindred, they staked out territory along a main pathway, not far from a McCain-Palin table. I tagged along carrying a folding table.
Nearby were more tables and displays, complete with a beanbag toss game set up by two other campus groups working to get out the vote. Taped to light poles were signs reading, "Early voting is SEXY." The guy at the McCain table came over to complain to the Obama table about the "illegality" of these signs, but they were the work of campus Greek organizations, not the Obama office.
Occasionally drifting past were members of the Ohio PIRG "OSU Votes" team, with their own voter encouragement clipboards and hand-outs. Over at the High Street entrance to the Oval, clipboard-bearing students were tackling each and every passer-by with offers of a free shuttle bus ride to vote early down at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Voting early does not meant voting easily: Students I spoke to on Wednesday said that they stood in line for two and a half hours, a number backed up by Walter Shapiro's Salon post ("How Obama just might win Ohio," 10 31 08), describing a line of "more than 700" early voters on Thursday, each taking over 2 hours to get to the voting booth. This does not bode well for smooth voting on Election Day!
Overall, the OSU campus is saturated with volunteer campaign workers, and no one escapes their attention. A "flash mob" event was held on Monday evening, when thirty volunteers snuck signs and banners to a busy intersection during rush hour, suddenly pulling them out to shout and cheer for the Obama-Biden ticket. Passersby were both delighted and aghast. One startled guy shouted to volunteer Oliver Renwick, "Do you have a JOB?" "Yeah - do YOU?" was his tart reply.
The table on the Oval was positioned to snare students to canvass neighborhoods this weekend and help with voter turnout on Tuesday. Volunteer Peter Sorkin sat in a chair, casually strumming his guitar, but his Obama passion was running high. Within an hour and half he and the others had signed up 15 new volunteers, and by the end of the day they had netted over 60.
A typical exchange went like this: Student nears the table, trying to avoid eye-contact. "Hi, want an Obama sticker?" calls Caitlyn. "Sure," says the student, slowing down, hoping to snare the goodie and keep moving. No such luck. "Hi, I'm Peter, what's your name?" asks Peter. Student gives her name, is hooked. "Can you give us an hour of your time to help Obama this weekend?" asks Caitlyn. "No really no, I'm a grad student/have midterms/a new job," replies the student, trying to edge away with her sticker. "Look, this is not a 'class project'," says Peter. "This is the real deal! Not just one hour?" or, "How badly do you want him elected?" This second gambit often stops a student in their tracks: they turn around and say, "Really badly," and actually walk back toward the table. Then Caitlyn and Thomas move in, signing the student up for a shift, promising that they can leave early if they need to - but making sure to get that all-important contact info, the phone number. That student will be called to make sure they show up.
Peter had other urgent cries, such as, "You can't spare an hour for the most important election of your lifetime?" A tall blond man came up to the table and said to Caitlyn and Thomas, "You have thirty seconds -- convince me." Peter spun around in his chair and called out, "How much do you want a future?" Ten minutes later the two were still talking. Peter had told me that terror of four more years of Bush was driving him, and that the time for being polite and nice was gone: "This is desperate. The real thing. I won't ever see them again, so I have to get them now. I will implore. And beg."
The blond man eventually tore himself free, walking away still "undecided," calling back, "It's all chill." Peter replied, "But it's not!" Caitlyn grumbled, "He's like, 'We're all gonna be OK after the election.' But we're not!" They were soothed only when a man named Steve walked up saying that he had already volunteered to canvass his dorm, and wanted to sign up for office shifts.
A tall student in a red hoodie walked by.
Caitlyn: "Want a sticker? Want to volunteer?"
"No thank you," the student replied politely, "I already voted -- for McCain."
"Thank you for voting!" Caitlyn replied.
Peter waited a beat and then called after him, "But do you want to volunteer for Obama?"
The student turned to smile, and everyone laughed.
Following a lunch of coffee and bake-sale cookies, I headed up High Street to the Kafé Kerouac, staging location for canvassing the five precincts and three polling locations in the neighborhoods around the OSU campus. Next Tuesday this funky location will be a nerve center for Obama campaign teams that will observe and respond to the voting process for this area.
On this sunny Wednesday, I and teammate Dusty were handed clipboards topped with a map of the two nearby streets - each a long block, with some High Street addresses - and a several-page list of the voters they wanted us to contact. For those not at home, we circled "NH." Some had moved, so we circled "MV." We split up to work faster, and I rang doorbells in search of answers to the question, "Have you voted yet?" A "Yes" got that lucky person removed from the list. Other replies, including NH or Undecided, mean that person will get a follow-up visit, a phone call - and intense attention on Election Day if they have still not voted.
My trek took me to several student apartment complexes along High Street, and into a hippie products store redolent of patchouli. The proprietor laughed when he learned that an ex-employee had listed the store as his "place of residence," and then asked me about early voting. I told him to arrive VERY early.
It was difficult to get accurate updated voter information from the student apartments. Most students were out during the middle of the day, so it was hard to know whether to circle "NH" or "MV." I got some clues from the names on battered mailboxes, but then had a stroke of luck - along one row of decrepit apartments the neighborhood mail carrier was delivering the mail, and offered to help. I showed her my list and she went down it quickly: Moved, still here, etc. I thanked her and she replied, "If you had been for the other guy, I would have left you alone."
Back at the Kafé Kerouac I turned in my unexpectedly accurate voter sheets totaling about seventy voters, apologized for not being able to do more, and staggered back down High Street. My feet were aflame after six hours on the job for Barack Obama, and I was brooding about all the boxes in the Kafé stacked high with clipboards waiting for canvassers. Go to www.BarackObama.com to find the campaign office nearest you.