Get out the vote

A coworker or mine is fairly active in the political scene and we will frequently exchange ideas on political topics. She has been actively volunteering for some time and I felt that it was time for me to step up to the plate and do something instead of just saying something. I signed up to be a volunteer for the democratic party and finally got a call from them a few days ago. They wanted me to do some canvasing in Indianapolis but I had to turn them down since it was short notice. Instead I volunteered to assist at the local phone bank.

I got there at 9am this morning and I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to do. The woman in charge explained that they have lists of registered voters in Indiana (a state that's pretty much up for grabs) and that they want to encourage those people to get out and vote. The interesting part was that they didn't want us to try to ram some sort of democratic agenda down their throats.

We were given a basic script to follow and a list of people. The list had a person's name, their phone number, and the location that they should go to if they wanted to vote. Additionally, we would inform them that the polls would close at 6pm and that if they needed transportation to the polling place that all they had to do is call 1-876-MY-IN-OBAMA (I think that's what the number was, maybe it was 877 area code). After the call, we would mark a comment indicating the result of the call. Sometimes it was a disconnected or wrong number. Sometimes the person already voted or had no interest in talking to us. We were never told to encourage anyone to vote Obama, just to vote.

Most of the calls were fairly routine but one call stuck with me. I was an elderly woman and her husband that I called. I asked them if they voted early or planned to vote on Tuesday. She told me that they were both disabled/handicapped and that they didn't get out much. I gave her the phone number that she could call if she needed a ride to the polls. She got a pen so she could copy the number down and I repeated the number once again for her. I called a total of 58 people but it felt good to know that it made a difference for at least two of them.