Norma Aaron is a Grassroots Correspondent for HuffPost's OffTheBus.
Because California has been reliably "blue" during the past four elections, I've devoted my entire volunteering time for this election to phone banking "swing" and "red" states, particularly New Mexico and Arizona, where my Spanish-speaking fluency (I'm one of those Americans by choice, having emigrated from Mexico 30 years ago) could help bring in the every-time-more-important Hispanic vote. For the last weekend of the campaign I signed up to go to Nevada, but the Obama Nevada State Campaign informed me they were only accepting volunteers who could stay through Election Day. I was truly delighted to hear that the Obama campaign is awash in donations - both of money and time - and that they are keeping a tight rein on all aspects of the campaign! Still, it seems a shame invest so much time in figuring out where to put resources, design the systems to attract those resources and have them work efficiently and then opt not to use them.
When I appealed my case to the campaign headquarters, they simply forwarded it to the Nevada State Organization. The email reply essentially repeated what I had been told on the phone: Thanks, but no thanks -- stay home and phone. My sadness at the rejection was mitigated by my decision to go to Chicago instead - not miss my grandson's 14th birthday to his great delight - and assist in the efforts to put Obama in the White House by going door-to-door in next-door Indiana (another "red" state).
So, I volunteered to canvass in Indiana, canceled my flights to Reno and flew to Chicago instead. I spent Friday afternoon at a Move On "phone party" not too far from where I was staying and got a list of phone numbers in Florida to phonebank to make sure people knew where their polling place was and what the requirements were so their vote would count.
Friday evening we celebrated my grandson's 14th birthday, where all the party-goers were heavy Obama supporters, happy to put their cell phones to use on behalf of the campaign. We had a great time making calls while the doorbell rang with the local kids trick or treating; that gave us a good icebreaker to connect with the people we were calling, who were also answering "trick or treat" requests.
I spent Saturday with a group to Michigan City, Indiana, which is about an hour's drive from Chicago. It Although the terrain there is completely different from the quonset huts in the desert that I remembered from my Reno experience during weekends I had driven up, earlier in the campaign, to canvass, I found that the responses from people in this small town where lifelong Republicans predominate was not too different to what I had encountered in Nevada when I had gone to register people. About 10% said they intended to stay home. I encountered only one still thinking about it and not a single for-sure McCain voter. One was voting for Bob Barr and one for Ralph Nader. Two people were ardent supporters of Obama, and had already voted. The rest, although wary of Obama and the Democrats - for a variety of reasons - had reluctantly changed their registration and were holding their nose, but committing to voting for Obama.
Sunday I was assigned to go to Fort Wayne but when I requested a return to Michigan City because it was closer to where I was staying, they were delighted to have me work there once again, where my statistics were a bit more skewed to Republicans, and only four of the people I spoke with were supporting Obama. So I'm getting ready to drive home and feeling a little less confident than I was yesterday. Hope I get some sleep tonight! And God willing, dream about getting tickets to the Historic Victory Celebration for Obama on Tuesday. As if we hadn't been doing so every night for the past several weeks....