In an earlier diary I posted, I passed along an update from my Mom - retired and involved in her first campaign - on volunteer efforts in Arapahoe County, Colorado.
Below are two more updates.
These are from email updates she sends out to friends and family.
Friday update:
Hi All,
The days have begun to merge together. We adhere, not to the Gregorian Calendar, or the Julian or Aztec Calendar, but to the 9 X 12 inch sign, changed daily, on the back wall of the Littleton Obama office. Yesterday it read: 12. The number of Days to Election.
Way back on Wednesday evening, we held our first "all hands" meeting at the office. We had cleared the tables out from the middle of the room and set up rows of folding chairs. New volunteers began arriving at 6:30 and at 7 PM, C, the Obama Field Organizer for Littleton, began to speak. C arrived in Littleton in August, by way of Redondo Beach, California, Harvard and NYU Law School. He's in his third year there and is taking a semester off to work for Obama. He stands out a bit in our Littleton crowd, browner than most of us and with a last name that does not trip easily off our mountain state anglo tongues. He retells his family story: immigrant grandparents from Lebanon and Ecuador making good in America. The American Dream.
He outlines our goals for the next two weeks: making sure that every single pro-Obama voter gets out and votes - either by Mail-In Ballot, Early Voting or on Election Day at the Polls. He tells us we will need 400 trained volunteers for Election Day: Poll Checkers and Leads, Runners, Phone-Bankers, Canvassers. Plus, the Comfort Team: volunteers who will bring in food and snacks and see to it that the Runners get sustenance to the Poll Checkers and Leads who will be, literally, glued to their assigned Targeted Polling Place from 6:30 in the morning until the polls close at 7 PM or until the last voter in line has voted.
He tells us we must prepare for long lines at polling places in the evening (although, if we do our job before Election Day, we will have cajoled most of the pro-Obama voters to vote by mail or vote early). To keep people in line (remember Ohio where voters stood in line for 8+ hours, in the rain, and finally left in frustration?), the Campaign has recruited clowns, jugglers, strolling musicians and magicians, to keep the voters laughing. We will have granola bars and water to distribute and hand warmers in case of cold weather.
On the more serious side, the Campaign will have 3,000 volunteer lawyers gathered in Denver, ready to be dispatched to polling sites as soon as a Poll Checker Lead calls with a potential voting rights violation. By late afternoon, most of these lawyers will be hunkered down at targeted polling sites, just in case polls officials try to close early or refuse to stay open until all the voters in line have had a chance to vote.
C, hitting his stride, stages an impromptu mock-up of our Election Day process. He grabs people out of the group and assigns them roles: Poll Checker, Poll Checker Lead, Runner, Canvasser, Phone Bankers, Comfort Captain, then runs through an Election Day scenario. Poll Checker at Precinct 123 detects a voting rights problem, alerts her Poll Checker Lead, who is always just outside the polling place, who then phones the Staging Location Director (our local office head), who then phones the Denver "boiler room", who then dispatches a lawyer. By this time we are all laughing and relaxed and ready to fill out the Volunteer Commitment Form. For the next two weeks, we check off the hours we are willing to give toward getting Obama elected. The 35 people at the meeting realize that we are far short of the number needed for Election Day and everyone takes extra sheets so that we can drag our neighbors, friends and family into this community effort to change our nation, our world and ourselves. We pledge our hours, our days ... "our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor ..."
Sunday update:
The last two days have been busy, spent, among other things, getting ready for an Election Day dress rehersal on Saturday. Our California volunteers, J and L have been working furiously, recruiting people to serve as Poll Checkers and Poll Leads. New to this political activism business, I was surprised to learn that the position of Poll Watcher is a documented part of the election process. In Colorado, and I cannot speak for other states, a Poll Watcher is a person designated by a political campaign to sit within a polling place and to watch that the local election officials (in Colorado, these are termed "Judges") don't lose ballots, refuse to let citizens vote, or engage in any other nefarious activities. Some polling places could get very crowded, since each candidate, as well as each initiative (and there are 18 in Colorado this year) on the ballot, is recognized as a campaign.
Poll Watchers must be residents of Colorado and must be credentialed by the appropriate county. To apply for the credentials, a campaign provides a training session, instructing participants in the appropriate does and don'ts for the successful Poll Watcher:
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Don't wear campaign badges, tee shirts, hats, or even bring a newspaper (it might have slanted election coverage).
Don't talk to the voters.
Don't bring electronic equipment into the polling place
Be completely deferential to the Election Judges; they are in charge of the polling place..
Be prepared to sit silently for up to 12 hours, with minimal bathroom and food breaks.
The appropriate county then issues an impressive looking piece of paper, certifying that the bearer is, indeed, a Credentialed Poll Watcher. This must be surrendered to the Chief Election Judge at the polling place.
The Obama campaign is differentiating the generic Poll Watcher into three separate positions: Poll Checker, who will sit quietly at the polls with a list of pro-Obama voters and check them off as they come in to vote. In addition, he/she will be alert for any voting violations. Poll Check Lead, who will be credentialed and thus able to float in and out of the polling place, but whose main duty will be to stay outside the polling place and be in cell-phone contact with the local staging office, reporting back at stated intervals, the names of those who have been to the polls. A Poll Watcher will be an attorney, who, depending on the polling place, will be on call, or on site.
Our job for the last two days has been to identify volunteers for these positions and get them to training sessions so they can be credentialed. The campaign has targeted 12 Littleton precints, so we need a minimun of 24 credentialed volunteers. It's like herding cats. But L and J, circling around like wily border collies, coordinate the volunteers' busy schedules with the numerous training sessions.
Yesterday we did a dress rehersal. Using the half dozen currently credentialed volunteers, we planned to descend on two early voting locations with real voter lists, and conduct a dry run. First snag early Saturday morning. Arapahoe County does not issue the required Poll Watcher credentials. It is the only county in Colorado that has failed to come through and we immediately suspect a "conspiracy." The county administration is solidly Republican.
So, we regroup, and decide we will continue the rehersal and just hang about outside the early voting place door. Things seem to work ok. The volunteers who are filling the role of "Runner", arrive to pick up our voter lists and to bring us food and water. We decide that we need to cross off names of voters with a red pen, so it is more easily visible, and that we definitely need clipboards to hold down the masses of paper, as the wind whips through and scatters our lists around the parking lot.
In mid-afternoon, we return to the office, where about 20 people are on cell-phones making calls to local voters. L and J are at tables, interviewing potential volunteers, and a half-dozen people are browsing in our Obama Store, buying posters, yard signs and tee-shirts. The food table is overflowing with big jugs of lemonade, homemade muffins, trail mix and bowls of tangerines and apples. Some evil person has brought in two huge bags of potato chips, despite our calls for "healthy" foods. I head for the chips.
9 days left!