Preparing for the Invasion of New Yorkers

I’m not sure how much I should be writing on this blog- lately we’ve started to get paranoid about McCain spies and our strategy. We are, after all, in the heart of the ultimate battleground. And NO, PEOPLE, PA IS NOT IN THE BAG YET! I won’t get into details, but people who know a lot more than I do have reason to be concerned. We now have a security guard at our office at night. I actually can barely write most of this with a straight face because, I mean, come on people, it’s Lansdale. But on the other hand, all this ridiculous (and false!) terrorist talk has some ugly, ignorant rednecks pretty riled up and these days you just can’t be sure. However, considering I’m pretty sure my readership numbers about a full dozen or so, I think we’re good.

This weekend we have tons of out-of-state volunteers coming to work with us, a lot of them directly from New York City. There’s nothing like calling a riled up democrat in Yonkers to make sure they’re confirmed and have directions to our little town of Lansdale. It’s amazing though- all these people are giving us one or two whole days, driving down on their own, dragging their friends and family, and in some cases paying for their own hotel rooms, just to pound our streets to help us win. I’m so impressed! The campaign has a very elaborate system to sign up people, usually online, from solid blue states to travel to nearby battleground states to help them. Except that this elaborate system is a bit of a mystery to us in little old Lansdale. We just get these lists of names and we’re only now figuring out that most of them haven’t been confirmed by anyone else, and we’re not entirely sure what information they are getting in terms of where to go and when. So by now, Dan and I have figured out enough of what we need to do to confirm the list, and what information we know they need that we can’t be sure they got from someone else. So today and yesterday (and for sure tomorrow and Friday), I’ve been spending my time slogging through lists of names to try to confirm people, give them directions, leave voicemails, update our database, and take counts of where we are and how many more shifts we still have to fill.

This weekend we are also doing a “dry run,” which is basically a dress rehearsal, of how things are going to work for GOTV next weekend. GOTV being “Get Out The Vote,” or Nov 1-4 (Sat-Tues) right before the election. This is when we give up trying to persuade people and just make damn sure that every single Obama supporter votes. So tonight we had a meeting to figure out how we’re going to organize the “flow” of the office. Like where to put the tables, and taping the floor, and color-coded everything. During GOTV we’re expecting hundreds of volunteers for both phone banking and canvassing, divided into 3 teams each (Dan’s, Ben’s, and Chad’s – basically our area sub-divided, each with 25 voting precincts or so). And mind you, our Lansdale office, with our 3 sub-groups, numbering about, oh, 75 or so voting precincts, is just one of 6 offices in Montgomery county alone. It’s massive. And our office is just one huge open space. So it really does need to be organized. Luckily for us, one of Dan’s other leader volunteers, Peter, is an architect or planner or something, so he actually drafted a floor plan for inside the building, and oh yeah, outside for the parking lot and traffic flow!