Fight the Ground War This Tuesday

GOTV is not glam. GOTV can be down-right dirty. But GOTV is what wins or loses us this election.

GOTV stands for "Get out the Vote." Really though, it's the ground war. It's what all of the commercials, the speeches and the mailings have led up to--this day-long contest of who can get the most bodies to polls (that actually work).

When I started out in politics, I knew nothing about GOTV. I was eighteen years old, studying political communication at George Washington University, and volunteering in the White House. It was 1993 and we all wanted to be George Stephanopoulos. We wanted to be Carville and Begala. We wanted to be visionaries, to learn how to craft the most perfect messages, to write the most powerful speeches so that hearts and minds would be won.

I saw what it was like to wage the air war. What I never saw, as I walked down those soft carpeted halls of the West Wing, was the ground war. I didn't have grounding in how politics was played at the local level. I didn't know about GOTV. I had no idea what was at stake when our armies of operatives and volunteers went out on Election Day. I didn't know that while the rest of us sat on pins and needles, those armies were out there fighting hand-to-hand combat.

See, I had only voted in Troy, Michigan. Lovely, safe, suburban Troy, Michigan. Where everything was tidy and neat. It never occurred to me that in this day and age, in cities up and down I-75, machines didn't work, people went down the street with bullhorns giving erroneous poll information, and that poll watchers could intimidate poll counters. I never knew that coordinated campaigns set up legal war rooms to field the hundreds of calls reporting irregularities, and sabotage, both indirect and direct.

Then of course came the year 2000, the year most of us lost our election innocence. Since then, we can no longer pretend that every election is fair, or that it will go off correctly without plenty of engagement and oversight on our part.

This is where you come in.

In every state, there are opportunities for you to "get out the vote." If you volunteer, you may be asked to call and remind likely voters to vote. You may be asked to drive a van to get people to the polls. You may be asked to knock on doors. There are also opportunities to be poll watchers. If you do so, you will witness the process on our behalf. The two past presidential elections have proven that we need such witnesses now more than ever.

There are few times in life when one day of volunteer service can make a difference. This Election Day, please volunteer as many hours as you can spare.

Click here to find the number for your local party. Tell them you want to help on Election Day. If you are in a "shoe-in" district, think about working in another district that has a tighter race.

In 2004, I went back to Michigan and helped on the coordinated campaign. I spent those first moments of the morning walking past the desks of phones reserved for volunteer phonebankers. Staffers didn't stop there. You kept going. Past the curtain. The volunteers did the calling, and campaigns have a hierarchy. But our party made a point of asking us to go canvassing. For one night, the entire staff went door-to-door, encouraging people to vote for our ticket.

I have to say, I relished the chance. I remember standing in the kitchen of a kind Warren woman, talking about why I felt President Bush let us down, listening to her worries about Kerry, and me trying to assuage them. I don't know if I changed her mind, but I know that we had a few moments together, where I listened to her, and she listened to me, and I knew that this is what politics could be at its best: two people trying to find common ground.

Before, I thought the magic only happened in the War Room. I was wrong. The magic happens when you actually talk to another person. When you ask them to vote. When you drive the car that allows them to vote. And if called upon, to explain why you support the candidates you do. In the War Room, you're trying to create the perfect smart bomb. You're trying to craft the right message to push the right buttons en masse. But if each one of us can be on the ground, encouraging, competing, showing the other side that we're watching, that we won't stand for intimidation, this will be the year we push back and win.

UPDATE: If You Had a Hard Time Getting in Touch

To those of you who called your party headquarters and only got voicemail, I'm sorry. That is awful. Ideally every phone should be staffed. But when it comes down to crunchtime, most staffers are trying to do twenty things at once, and volunteers are dispatched, and well, voicemail happens. I would ask that you would just be proactive, and find out where your county headquarters and offer your services. Say you want to help with GOTV. Say you want to make phonecalls. They should be able to put you to work.