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Getting my signals straight

Suffolk, Virginia.  I ran this morning in the beautiful Cedar Hills Cemetery and environs, which are mostly Black neighborhoods close to the center of this early 18th century town on the banks of the Nansemond river.  The historic marker near my hotel informs that the Union occupied the town during most of the Civil War, though Virginia had seceded and joined the Confederacy.  I didn’t see mention of either the Union or the Confederacy at the cemetery entrance, where monuments marked more recent wars.

I arrived early yesterday afternoon and went right to work canvasing:  knocking on doors looking for Obama voters and trying to get them to clearly commit to getting out to vote on Tuesday, or taking advantage of the opportunity to vote early (in Virginia it’s “absentee in person”) today and tomorrow at the registrar’s office.  Get out the vote (GOTV) is the real focus now in the last days leading up to November 6.  This means not just urging people but getting them to tell you when and where they will vote and how they will get to the polls.

Lots of people aren’t home on a Thursday afternoon in November, so we leave some leaflets tucked by the doorknob (mail boxes are reserved for the post office).  Many of the older folks have clear plans to vote on Tuesday:  “Early, up at Book T elementary,” they say readily.  Younger people are more problematic.  Some just aren’t registered.  At this point, there is nothing they can do about that.  Others have jobs, babies in arms or other commitments.  We try to get them to start thinking about how they are going to make it to Booker T. Washington Elementary School.

The saddest group consists of young men with felony convictions.  They can get their voting rights restored, but they have to fill out some forms to do it well before now.  Most haven’t, judging from my highly unscientific sample from yesterday.  The look on their faces is hard to read, but it seems to me to be saying something like this:

I’ve spent time in jail and now I can’t find a job–why would I care about voting?  You and this society don’t want to hear from me.  And if I spoke up you wouldn’t like what I have to say.

Just a guess, but hard to imagine that it is any friendlier than that.

In the evening, we phone bank.  Most people don’t answer–I imagine they are tired of the calls.  Others are happy to hear from the Obama campaign and quickly confirm their intention to vote.

I got no fence sitters or Romney supporters yesterday during either canvasing or phone banking.  This is testimony to the effectiveness of the much-ballyhooed data crunching the campaign has been doing behind the scenes.  They know who their voters are and focus like a laser on them in the GOTV campaign.

Late yesterday evening two trucks arrived with the “voter protection” materials:  a few hundred pounds of the equipment for poll watchers on Election Day.  Several of us helped haul the stuff into the office.  This was a stark reminder of how complicated the logistics are behind this operation.  The large plastic bags of already sorted material were marked for each polling place.  No serious problems are anticipated for voter protection in Suffolk, but it is important for the campaign to have its people watching and also able to provide assistance to those who show up at the wrong polling place or who find they are not on the voter list.

I’m heading out now for another day:  canvasing morning and afternoon, phone bank in the evening I suppose.  This isn’t glorious work, but it puts me in touch with people in a way that my normally bookish existence does not.  I’m not cut out for more than a few days of this every four years, but if you want to see your candidate elected this is one of the few things you can do to make it happen.