Voter Registration Chase, Part 2

As good as it was speeding around town feeling like an action hero running from my car to doorstep and doorstep to car saving the votes of Americans all across Bristol, not every house on the chase was so rewarding. One incomplete form additionally lacked an apartment number for the voter’s apartment complex. It was dark when I parked at the curb, and I circled the building’s many entrances looking for the name on a door or a mailbox. I asked several people walking in if they recognized the name. No one did.

After fifteen minutes of searching, I left, and I knew that was one less person who could participate on Election Day.

At another address, after a gentleman completed his form, I registered his daughter. His wife, however, though eligible, patently refused. She was an Obama supporter and a citizen, but she simply didn’t want to participate in politics. I couldn’t understand it. Her daughter insisted it was a losing battle, and she was right. Despite ten minutes of my best efforts, the mother laughed away my reasoning and imploring and said that she would trust a higher power to elect Obama.

By 8:30, I still had four incomplete forms left to go, but I needed to reach the Board of Elections by nine. I headed to the office. The new registrants I had were better than no new registrants at all, but those four forms weighed heavily on my passenger seat. They represented four people who believed that they had completed their voter registration but would not be able to cast a formal ballot.

It seemed to me to be a peculiar tragedy. Already the process alienated so many people, and now a small number of people (multiplied to great scale around the country, I’m sure) would have their registrations denied because they were incomplete, or would lose their forms in the mail, or because of poor handwriting would not be able to cast their votes.

This is the very process that our nation is founded on, and yet it is imperfect. It was crushing to bear even a small part of that responsibility, and crushing to hand in—and have handed back to me—those four incomplete forms.

Voter Registration Chase, Part 1

The deadline for voter registration in Pennsylvania was Monday, October 6th. It was the last day to change party affiliation, to change one’s address, to register under a new name, or to register for the first time.

Standing next to someone while they filled out a registration form was absolutely one of the greatest parts of the job; because of our work, that individual would be able to participate in the fundamental building block of democracy. Standing outside of a grocery store for three hours with a clipboard and a stack of forms waiting for new voters, however, was not one of the greatest parts of the job. I won’t lie: sometimes it was tedious. Nonetheless, we tested out locations all over our turf to identify where we could register the greatest number of people.

Good locations in Bucks County yielded four or more registrants in an hour, and as the weeks ticked by, we were able to track down the high traffic locations where we could find the most unregistered people: near colleges or high schools, outside some grocery stores, at busy intersections or movie theaters. At my best, I pulled together over thirty at a school in a few hours. At my worst, I stood at train station for two hours and registered only one person. And he was a Republican.

Voter registration, as a note, need not be bi-partisan. Every citizen is guaranteed the right to vote, and they can register at any courthouse and most post offices. But as a staff member for a political campaign, I am perfectly justified in doing a favor for Democrats or Obama supporters by bringing the form to them while they shop, and then dropping it off at the Board of Elections for them—and I need not do the same favor for someone who calls me a terrorist and then asks for a form. The idealistic vision of bringing everyone into the process must, at some point, relent to the practicality of winning an election. This is why we set up tables at colleges and not at gun shows.

By October, the number of registered Democrats in Pennsylvania had grown by over 200,000 voters, and the result was that historically Republican counties like Bucks and neighboring Montgomery County had a new majority of Democrats. Still, we pushed all the way to the deadline to try to increase our advantage.

~

In the days leading up to the deadline, we would pore through our cars and desks to make sure we didn’t have any completed forms lying around. The potential tragedy of someone having handed us a complete form only to discover that her name isn’t listed at the polls because of our mistake was enough to scare us into some thorough cleaning. Thankfully we managed to avoid it.

But we could not avoid every error. Inevitably, we encountered improperly filled out forms on which the voter’s driver’s license number or social security number was missing, or on which the voter forgot to select a party or check off whether it was a new registration or a change of address. Mostly, these incomplete were resolvable with a quick phone call. But some people wouldn’t fill in the optional field for phone numbers. Others, when we were able to reach them, understandably refused to share over the phone the last four digits of their social security numbers.

In those cases, we had to drive to the person’s home and ask that they fill out the form in person, and this was the voter registration chase.

As the registration deadline approached, more forms came in more often and in larger numbers, and we had to chase down more and more information. Several weeks before the deadline, the campaign hired a staff member whose sole purpose was to register voters and bring the forms to the courthouse. By the deadline, every field organizer had to shoulder part of the chase in his or her turf.

~

On the evening of Monday, October 6th, there were nine voters in Bristol that I needed to chase down before the Board of Elections office closed at the extended hour of 9pm. I plotted a route with Google Maps to go from house to house, jumped in my car with the incomplete forms and a stack of blank ones and sped off.

Little felt more rewarding than finding an address, jumping out my car, running up to a door and explaining the situation. At the first few houses, the voters were home and marveled a little at the thoroughness of the campaign. “You guys must really want every vote! I'm so impressed!” said one woman.

At another house, a gentleman had forgotten to indicate his party. He came to the door in a white t-shirt. He had a deep voice and a direct stare. I explained who I was, indicated the blank space on his form, and pointed to the check boxes for “Democratic,” “Republican,” “Independent,” or “Other.” He glanced at my Obama jacket, looked skeptically at it, and hesitated.

“Who do I check off?” he huffed to himself and then paused.

His wife was standing in the corner with a child on her hip, and another child was standing in the middle of the room looking at me. She watched as if she too were awaiting the outcome.

“Which party do I choose?” he said, almost perturbed, and turned to his wife.

She looked at me in a way that seemed knowing, and she smiled broadly. Her voice was slow:

“You want Obaaama.” Her grin grew larger and she nodded deliberately.

He turned to me and looked at the form again, my pen in his hand. “Obaaama,” she said slowly, and you could hear the smile.

“He’s a Democrat!” I piped in cheerily and pointed to the check box.

The man checked off the box for the Democratic Party, handed me the form and my pen, and I thanked him before running back to the car to head to the next house. As I left, I heard the young boy standing in the center of the room say, “What did he want? What did that guy want?”

Family Time

You could break the schedule of a Field Organizer in Bucks County into three time chunks: weekends, weekdays, and weeknights. On the weekends we canvassed; out-of-state volunteers poured into our offices by the busload, and we sent them out knocking on the doors of undecided voters. On weeknights, we made phone calls; from 5pm to 9pm, local volunteers poured through list after list of undecided voters and volunteer prospects and called to persuade or recruit them. And on weekdays we spent our time preparing for weekends and weeknights. All told, we started by 9am and typically finished some time after 10:30pm.

The only regular downtime that we had was from 9-10pm, between the end of calls and the beginning of our daily reporting. In the Lower Bucks office, we called this Family Time. We would pile into one of our conference rooms with our laptops and stacks of papers and dig into casseroles of baked ziti or lasagna provided by generous volunteers. Feasting was followed by furious tallying of our voter contact results and a 10pm nightly conference call with regional and state directors.

This was pretty much the only regular time on any given day that we could count on seeing the whole field team from our office. Some organizers trickled in late from remote phone banks or volunteer meetings. Rolling in around 9:30pm with coffee, coat and shoulder bag, they’d settle into an empty seat and scoop up a plate of home-cooked goodness.

In what felt like a 24-hour job, I think our spontaneous decision to have Family Time—even when we didn’t have any food—created a sense of camaraderie that otherwise would not have existed. We got to know each other better, we compared challenges and successes, we shared humorous stories, sometimes we caught up on the news, and we generally let ourselves out a little.

The name “Family Time” was a joke at first, but we grew into it. By the time the election had come and gone, it didn’t feel far from the truth.

And it makes me think about the importance of families having shared time together. It was during that regular evening hour not just that our phones were less likely to ring or that a responsibility was less likely to take us away, but also that we were more likely to slow down and step out of our daily focus on goals or agendas.

But maybe with a family it should be a little earlier.

And maybe without the laptops.

The Alfred E. Smith Dinner

If you have not watched the speeches from the Alfred E. Smith dinner back in October, please watch them now. They are (very, very) funny and honest, and they were a chance to see the candidates in much more natural guises.

What gripped me the most about their words and demeanor at this dinner, however, was the stark contrast to the campaign trail. Obama and McCain joked easily about their policy differences instead of berating each other for them. They laughed about old age and middle names instead of labeling each other unfit because of them. They, in their camaraderie, dismissed and acknowledged the ridiculousness of the lies that were circulating about them. This is civil. And it frustrates me that they are capable of rising above the vitriol and deception of the campaign, but that they sink back into the divisive attacks the next day.

But, for now, enjoy the humor!

The Great Awakening

The office phone wouldn’t stop ringing in the days after the election. People who had never stepped foot in Bristol called morning, noon, and night to offer both congratulations and thanks. It made for a Becket-like scene: the walls were bare and most of our belongings (maps, folders, paper products) were packed into boxes—and this lonely phone kept sounding from somewhere offstage.

The volunteers who had staffed the reception desk for hours on end came in briefly throughout the day to say goodbyes and pick up a few belongings left behind. Some of them lingered to talk, and we lingered with them. We would miss them, we knew, and they us. We spent most of our time in those few days filling boxes and making piles to be packed or thrown away. When the phone rang, someone darted to the front room. If a familiar volunteer happened to be walking in at that time, I would sometimes invite him or her to answer the phone. “It’s someone calling to thank you,” I would promise. The volunteer would pick up the phone, listen, smile, maybe say a few words of thanks in return, and then hang up. People who had never been involved with the campaign office seemed to have this urge to call and thank the office for what they felt was a miracle.

For the volunteers and staff who had been committed to the campaign, the days following the election were less uniformly euphoric. We had invested hours upon hours, days upon days, and months upon months of our lives in the cause, and in the process we had built a community that was united in a single purpose. We met daily, we set goals and sometimes fell just shy and sometimes smashed them, we ate together, we improvised solutions to crises. We learned from and worked with people that we had never known before. We built lasting relationships.

These relationships grew first from our collected inspiration to support this campaign; but then second, from the leadership and organization that enabled us all to contribute in meaningful, effective, and personal ways. The team structure of the Obama Campaign’s field organization invited everyone to contribute personally and comfortably.

While this involvement inspired many newcomers to politics, like myself, I think it meant even more to those who had become disenfranchised.

Lily, a young grandmother, has lived by herself in Levittown since her husband died. She moved from Las Vegas, where she worked as an executive assistant and where she brushed shoulders with Tony Bennett and John Kerry. Now she works assisting the owner of a small Chinese biomedical research facility. Her grown children are not far, but she misses the company and the glamour of her old work.

She first volunteered for the campaign two months or so before the election. She declared then that she would not talk to people on the phones and she would not knock on doors because we wouldn’t want her saying what she really felt, so she became the “data queen.” She would arrive first thing in the morning several days a week, pick up data gathered from calls and knocks, and sit at the computer entering information for hours. She would talk with anyone and everyone that came through, and after she went to see Bruce Springsteen’s rally for Obama in Philadelphia, she brought in 8x10 photos that she had taken and printed to post on the office walls.

In the days leading up to the election, there had been no data to enter, so Lily had assumed the role of greeter. The morning after the election, I came to the office at 11am, and Lily showed up shortly after. She walked in, sat on the floor in the doorway, and leaned against the wall. She gushed about the win. We talked about what a team effort it had been. She said, “It was, and I want you to know what my daughter said to me the other day.” She paused and looked up. “She said, ‘ma, we’ve all noticed that this has changed you. You’ve really come alive again.’” I didn’t know her before, but I could see it, too. The same way that this election had awakened me more fully to politics, it had reawakened her to something she could invest herself in, something she could get excited about and feel proud of.

John had a similar story. A retired engineer, John was a lifelong Republican until 2004, when the administration’s fiscal irresponsibility turned him off. He got behind Obama early on, despite the outrage of his still firmly Republican wife. In his 70s now, John’s slowness of speech and movement sometimes belie his mental acuity. It’s easy to overlook his wit.

John had been involved since the primaries, sometimes making phone calls, but mostly entering data. We canvassed together once back in September. Mostly, he came in every morning to drop off the previous day’s sheets and pick up new ones.

On election weekend, John was part of a three-person phone bank coordination team. Nearly 30,000 calls were made in the four days leading up to the election, and John made sure that every page that went out came back. On some days the volunteer traffic was so heavy that callers dialed the phones more times than we had in entire previous weeks.

At the end of each of the four days, John and his two teammates cleaned up stray call scripts and scratch paper and tallied up the numbers. And every day they would marvel at how much they had accomplished, how much human energy they had directed.

A day or two after the election, John stopped by the office, his crisp “Obama ‘08” baseball cap perched as usual atop his head. I met him in the hallway, and he was beaming.

“We did it!” he said.

We traded stories of the night before and the celebrations we had heard about, and at one point John stopped and looked up, a little glassy eyed.

“This has really been great,” he started, “and…”

He stammered a little and looked away.

“And…”

I could hear the tears welling. He finished the sentence between sobs.

“…And I’ve really enjoyed being a part of it!”

We hugged, and I understood more clearly how much the participation in a team effort meant to John and others. And Election Day seemed to validate that the effort we put in and the relationships we built were real.

I asked how his wife was doing, and he cracked a slow but wide smile.

“She’s pissed.”

He paused and grinned.

“But we’re still friends!”

We started laughing, and I wondered what would come next.

“Until the next election, right?” I asked. “And the team here will stay active?”

“I sure hope so!”

Stop 'n Go

To get to I-95 from the Bristol Headquarters, one has to drive up a one-mile stretch of Route 413 that is interrupted with at least half a dozen stoplights. Late each night, as I headed back to my housing in New Hope, I found that I would coast through green lights at every single intersection except the final turn onto the I-95 on-ramp, which inevitably flashed yellow from one intersection away, and then red just before I arrived. Every attempt to catch the green light was futile. Even when I leaned a little more heavily on the gas than I should.

This is just the kind of thing that drives me bonkers. Usually, during the drive I would be on the phone with my fiancee (more on this later), and I would have to interrupt our conversation to say, "DaaaAAARGh! AGAIN!"

And then I would get over it.

But nonetheless, the sheer predictability of it befuddled me: all of the other intersections were coordinated so that drivers could coast right through. Why not the last one?! That last left turn was the only barrier between me and a smooth transition to the rest of my drive home. But instead of swinging onto my short daily stretch of I-95, I had to stop and sit at the intersection, all alone, in the wee morning hours, looking around for some reason why the light turned yellow just before I arrived.

And there was none.

But then it happened.

One morning, maybe around 1 or 2am, one night when it was too late to call home, I was sailing up 413 when I noticed from some distance away that the final light was red. I looked to see the glare from the lights facing the cross street, and I noticed that they had just flicked from green to yellow.

I slowed down a little, estimating the amount of time it would take me to arrive at the intersection and the time it would take my lights to direct me home.

While the cross light was in stasis, I drifted closer, and then I saw it turn red.

I was almost upon the intersection, and I knew that the time had come: I coasted up to the box, the lights above me turned green, I veered to the left and, proud as a conquering hero, I accelerated through the intersection and onto the highway ramp!

Huzzah!

Naturally, I looked all around me to see if anyone else had shared my moment of greatness; naturally, at that hour, no one was around. I looked at my phone; it was too late to call my fiancee. I looked at the lights in my rear-view mirror; they had already changed.

And so, I looked back at the road, took a deep breath, and continued on my way, the wacky music on the late-night National Public Radio station sounding a little less abrasive, the oncoming headlights trickling my way glaring a little less roughly, and my recurring anticipation that I again wouldn't get quite enough sleep that night feeling a little less defeating.

Hillary and Hellos

I learned a long time ago that when you speak with famous people, the last thing they want to hear about is what brought them their fame. Chris Farley perfectly demonstrated this truth in one of his recurring Saturday Night Live skits. He met with celebrities, recalled one of their most publicized moments, and then said, “Remember that?! (pause) That was awesome!” Farley nodded gleefully and childishly, the guest shifted uncomfortably and muttered “thanks,” and then Farley stammered and moved on to the next awesome moment.

So it was when Hillary Clinton came to town.

When Hillary visited a picturesque state park in Horsham, PA, on the border between Bucks County and Montgomery County, I was lucky enough to be able to deliver the field pitch to the crowd—to impress upon them the importance of volunteering on Election Day weekend to make sure our supporters get out to the polls. Then, after addressing the crowd, I had the opportunity to step backstage and join in the “clutch,” which is when the VIP for the event shakes hands with people who are involved or invited. I hadn’t suspected that I would be a part of this, so I hadn’t prepared any questions or comments for the occasion. I searched for what I thought would be most important.

Context: The region of Bucks County for which I was responsible went to Hillary in the primaries by a four-to-one ratio. The Clintons had visited Bristol several times, and most recently they had shut down the main street of Bristol Borough to hold what really amounted to a massive block party. As a result, there was incredible loyalty to the Clintons, and because of this, despite an overwhelmingly Democratic population in Lower Bucks, support for Senator Obama in the months leading up to the election was not nearly so strong. Voters in Bristol had a personal, emotional attachment to the Clintons. Reason had little persuasive effect early on. For the people of Lower Bucks County, it would take a visit by Hillary or Bill to push them towards Obama. This was undoubtedly why she had come.

I held this in mind as I approached the clutch. I thought about what mattered most to the struggling working class voters that I engaged every day. I thought about their investment in Hillary, their dashed hopes that a woman would step into the Oval Office as president, their sense of having the nomination taken away from her, their affinity for this family that had brought prosperity in the 1990s.

And so when Hillary turned, smiled, and shook my hand, I said,

“Thank you for coming here. It means so much to the people here.”

It sounded cheesy coming out, but it was the most genuine statement I could make on behalf of the people I was working with.

Hillary replied, with the same smile, “Thanks! Are you having a good time?!”

I recalibrated.

“Yeah!” I pointed to the orange and red trees, the blue sky, the barn and the lake. “Are you kidding? This weather and this setting? It’s beautiful here!”

We shared a few more meaningless words, and then she turned to the next person.

I shrugged, put my hands in my pockets, watched for a little bit, trying to pick out who the other visiting guests and VIPs were, and then walked back to the stage.

Bucks County Election Calendar

Let me begin with the phases of my experience in the Obama campaign.

But before I do, it's important to know a little bit about Bucks County. Shaped a bit like the state of Vermont, but tilted at an angle (see the compass on the map), Bucks County ranges from the suburban lower end to the wealthier central towns to the rural upper reaches. Lower Bucks is decidedly Democratic, and Upper Bucks is (or was) decidedly Republican and Independent. Central Bucks sits right in the middle, and none of the regions seems to enjoy spending time in the others. I began my experience in Central Bucks and then was restationed down in Lower Bucks.

Phase One - New Hope, Solebury, Buckingham, Plumstead...: From June 15th until July 26th, I was an Obama Organizing Fellow in Central Bucks County. I shared a handful of towns with another organizer, and our goals were to register voters and build a thriving community of volunteers. The ten or so of us for the whole county were based out of a volunteer's porch and basement until we opened an office in Doylestown, PA. More on that later. Near the end of my time as an organizing fellow (which is really a fancy name for "full time volunteer"), I was invited to return as a paid Field Organizer.

Phase two - Transition: When the fellowship ended, I took a few days off to perform with Red Rooster in New York and at the Newport Folk Festival. The staff position began on August 1st, but I was not assigned turf until mid-August. During the interim, I worked out of the office in a number of different supportive capacities.

Phase three - Bristol: I was ultimately assigned to be the Field Organizer for Bristol Borough and Township, the Democratic heart of Lower Bucks County. From mid-August through November 4th, I was responsible for continuing to register voters, expanding the volunteer base, persuading undecideds, building a volunteer leadership team, and when the time came, turning out the vote.

The differences between the phases and the differences between the regions will be the subject of future posts. Until then, it's time to get some regular sleep...!

Mission Accomplished

(Team Bucks celebrates one last time)

Bucks County: 54% Obama; 45% McCain
Bristol: 67% Obama; 32% McCain

Majorities in 39 of 39 precincts

Bristol Township (pop. ~55,000): 65% Obama
Bristol Borough (pop. ~10,000): 72% Obama
Collected Turnout: 76% of registered voters

I'm back in New York City now, contemplating the next step and staring down two mammoth inboxes and a text message backlog. It's been a long five months (five!), and the next few weeks will be devoted to looking back on the experience of the election.

Thanks to all my friends for all the support you've given me over the last several months. Here's to reconnecting...

Field Pitching

When Hillary Clinton came to Bucks and Montgomery Counties to speak today, I gave the field pitch to the crowd of 1,500. It's a direct ask: there are three weeks left to go; it's time to step up and help the campaign.

Field Organizing

Phone calls, knocking on doors, researching voter precincts, strategy meetings, more phone calls, data entry, building relationships, registering voters, staying late in the office...

Slow Motion

The updates are far and few between--the blog is running in slow motion.


I've been hired now as a Field Organizer for the campaign, and I'll be in Pennsylvania until the election on November 4th, so the updates will continue to arrive slowly, but I hope that when I do post, they'll be as electric as this video...

I Asked; She Accepted

to love - to learn - to live

Into the Wild

Let's review the last few days in the back yard. We had bunnies:

badgers (?):
turkeys:
and deer, birds, squirrels, and more...

Ahhhhh.....