Today on Obama's website, when I clicked on Make Calls, I got this message:
Congratulations! You have made calls from coast to coast and have built this movement one conversation at a time. Now, you can thank fellow supporters for their involvement in this campaign for change and ask them to participate in Vote for Change to register new voters.
For those of us in non-swing states like CA and NY, this might be a fun way to help the campaign. So, let's do our part (and put our free cell phone minutes to good use) by encouraging people in swing states to organize Vote for Change events in their communities.
Basically, the script told me to call people in Asheville and ask them to organize Vote for Change events.
Now, I wanna point out that if you're uncomfortable making these calls, know that you're calling established Obama supporters and that the Obama website has this tutorials and FAQs page.
I feel a little uncomfortable following the call script verbatim (and so I've tweaked it a bit), but more importantly, I felt a little awkward asking people to organize a voter registration drive and then simply directing them to the Vote for Change Guide online, as the script told me to do.
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So, this is what I did to feel better prepared for my phone calls.
First off, you need to click on the Make Calls link, and then click on "Click here to get started."
Next, I clicked on the first name on the list of phone numbers, and then I used an external website to look up the location of where I'm calling, based off the area code.
Then, after finding out the city I'm calling into, I used the USPS website to look up a zip code for that city.
Now that I know the location and an appropriate zip code, I went back over to the Vote for Change homepage and searched for existing Vote for Change events (this is very easy to do) because I was afraid that nobody would want to actually assume the responsibility of organizing and coordinating their own event and because I wanted to at least plug volunteers into a voter registration drive that is already being organized. Low and behold, I was SHOCKED that in Asheville, North Carolina, there is not one Vote for Change event organized right now. (This means, though, that Obama's campaign is well aware of the existing shortcomings with our voter registration efforts, and best of all, they are allowing us to fire up our base and build for victory)
FYI, here are some basic guidelines for organizing a voter registration drive, and these may help you, if you decide to make these phone calls (or organize a voter reg drive).
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So, now I have a mission ahead of myself for the next hour until Al Gore's speech. Make phone calls. Tell people to maybe turn their TVs on at 8:30 or to go to Obama's website b/c Al Gore is speaking with Obama in Detroit. But most importantly, I've got to find one person in Asheville who wants to organize a Vote for Change event and wants to recruit volunteers from within the my.barackobama.com network. Depending on the response I'm getting, I may offer an organizer (in a swing state) my help (from my room in NYC) with finding volunteers and other online logistics for their voter registration drive. Who's in?