Gettin' Out The Vote
Yesterday fair ardaniel had to work, leaving me to my own devices for most of the day. I'd gotten a call the day before informing me of a local Obama phonebank nearby and decided what the heck, I've already given the guy $30, why not spend a few hours on the phone for him.
The signup form on the Obama website said there'd be 21 people on my shift. Oh, oh no. There were 50-60 people inside, with a dozen or two more outside waiting to sign in. Signed in, got my training on the phone system- a clever setup that allows you to use your own cell phone to get into the system- and then went and found a quite spot across from the commisary at Culver Studios to sit down, log into the system, and start taking calls from the auto-dialer. The target for the day: Missouri. Here are some highlights:
About 10 calls in I got a very stern lecture from an elderly lady about calling after 7 on a Sunday. "I'm *going* to vote for the man, but even *God* rested on Sunday!"
Another older woman (I got quite a few of those): "Well, I glad to hear you're voting for Obama, ma'am. It's going to be a tight race out there." "You're sure right about that. Missouri's full of *bigots* and *horrible people.*" "Well, all the better that you're trying to change that, ma'am!"
Between calls, I overhead the one-sided conversation of a fellow voulenteer across from me: "Well, that's great. I-- oh! Well, happy birthday in advance, then! Uh huh. Well, I'm sure you can vote *before* you go out drinking!"
"Hi, my name is Chad and I'm a voulenteer for the Barak Obama campaign. How are you doing tonight?" "...are you *real?*" "Yes sir! I assure you I am not a robot!" Sadly, it sounded like he'd had one too many political phone calls, so I didn't get to carry that one further.
"Well, I was going to vote for him, but I've had about three hundred of these calls today and it's about enough to make me vote for the other guy!" "Well, ma'am, I certainly would hate to see that happen, so here's what I'll do fo you. I've got a button I can press here that will mark you as 'Do Not Call' for us, and I'll go ahead and hit that when we're done, how'd that be?" "That would be wonderful, thanks!"
It was a pretty cool way to spend a couple hours. I wish I had more time, I could have probably gone back today and been on the phone with Florida. After a solid 90+ minutes on the phone, I had maybe 30% hang-ups, a smattering of answering machines, one guy who refused to tell me how he was going to vote, another smattering of undecideds, and a pretty wide majority of people who either were going to or had already voted for Obama.
Oh, and *one* person who was voting for McCain.
The signup form on the Obama website said there'd be 21 people on my shift. Oh, oh no. There were 50-60 people inside, with a dozen or two more outside waiting to sign in. Signed in, got my training on the phone system- a clever setup that allows you to use your own cell phone to get into the system- and then went and found a quite spot across from the commisary at Culver Studios to sit down, log into the system, and start taking calls from the auto-dialer. The target for the day: Missouri. Here are some highlights:
About 10 calls in I got a very stern lecture from an elderly lady about calling after 7 on a Sunday. "I'm *going* to vote for the man, but even *God* rested on Sunday!"
Another older woman (I got quite a few of those): "Well, I glad to hear you're voting for Obama, ma'am. It's going to be a tight race out there." "You're sure right about that. Missouri's full of *bigots* and *horrible people.*" "Well, all the better that you're trying to change that, ma'am!"
Between calls, I overhead the one-sided conversation of a fellow voulenteer across from me: "Well, that's great. I-- oh! Well, happy birthday in advance, then! Uh huh. Well, I'm sure you can vote *before* you go out drinking!"
"Hi, my name is Chad and I'm a voulenteer for the Barak Obama campaign. How are you doing tonight?" "...are you *real?*" "Yes sir! I assure you I am not a robot!" Sadly, it sounded like he'd had one too many political phone calls, so I didn't get to carry that one further.
"Well, I was going to vote for him, but I've had about three hundred of these calls today and it's about enough to make me vote for the other guy!" "Well, ma'am, I certainly would hate to see that happen, so here's what I'll do fo you. I've got a button I can press here that will mark you as 'Do Not Call' for us, and I'll go ahead and hit that when we're done, how'd that be?" "That would be wonderful, thanks!"
It was a pretty cool way to spend a couple hours. I wish I had more time, I could have probably gone back today and been on the phone with Florida. After a solid 90+ minutes on the phone, I had maybe 30% hang-ups, a smattering of answering machines, one guy who refused to tell me how he was going to vote, another smattering of undecideds, and a pretty wide majority of people who either were going to or had already voted for Obama.
Oh, and *one* person who was voting for McCain.