Ohio Diary: Day 1

We took the bus to Cincinnati. The first thing that greeted us on our arrival was a line of people waiting in front of one of the county buildings for early voting. Volunteers from the local Democratic campaigns were handing out literature. When they heard we were from Chicago, they thanked us for coming.

Someone said the wait was around 45 minutes -- not bad. Also, not bad is the fact that they have early voting till 11/3 -- i.e. just a day before the General Election. That said, I found it extraordinary when someone later in the day said the location we saw while coming in was the only location for early voting for all of Hamilton County.

Anyway, we slowly made it up to the Obama Region 2 Office for Cincinnati (Walnut Hill) on Madison Ave. The distances on the map don't look all that far but unfortunately there's no indication of elevation and Cincinnati has hills!

By the time we got to the Obama Office we were pretty walked out. The people there greeted us. There were even a couple campaign workers originally from Chicago. Then surprise, surprise, one of the campaign workers -- this one from Cincinnati by the name of Andrew -- shook my hand saying he remembered me from Canvassing in DuPage County for Tammy Duckworth. He even remembered my name after two years!

Eventually they set us down to doing data-entry work. It was easy to do and I managed to keep up with the people doing phone-banking.

I promised I'd do canvassing on the next couple of days.

Rumor of the Day: Obama's coming to Cincinnati on Sunday.

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