Ohio Diary: Day 5

I made it early to the District Office on Madison intent on spending the day canvassing.

This was the last day before the election. With only a day to go, the work typically consists of 'lit drops' -- i.e. going from door to door just leaving reminders, usually in the form of 'door-hangers' about the election.

We went again to Brown County. The Obama Campaign in Ohio was making a big push to get as many votes as possible in the traditionally Republican areas outside of Cincinnati. Everybody was sent out.

I was driving with someone from Brooklyn New York. When we got to the Dem HQ in Georgetown they gave us not one but two packets filled with names and addresses of people to knock on doors of.

The area we went to was almost purely rural with concentrations of houses here and there. Just getting from the street to the houses required a quick drive by car.

We took no break. We didn't eat anything. We didn't even drink anything. We just plowed through the list of names.

By the time 4pm rolled around, we had finished the first packet. Two hours later we had to stop -- it was just too dark.

When we got back to the Township Office, I tallied up our 'Doors Knocked', I couldn't believe it -- we had knocked on 100 doors -- just me and the guy from Brooklyn. On the news, they said the Obama Campaign had contacted a million people at home. 100 of that million were done by us.

We got back to the Cincinnati Field Office at around 8:30. The place was full of people doing phone-banking. There was a huge table of cookies and candies to keep people going. The phone-banking people filled out sheets which were then tallied up by the people doing data-entry. In another part of the office, people were still putting together Obama lawn-signs, pack finished signs by the dozen into a truck for use tomorrow.

All-in-all, on this last evening before the election, the Office was an incredible hive of activity.

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