This past weekend and yesterday our supporters stepped up to the plate to help Get Out The Vote. They knocked on millions of doors, made millions of phone calls and spent countless hours volunteering their time to make sure that everyone who needed voting information received it. All across the country people came together for change. People of all ages and backgrounds got back to the basics of grassroots organizing to do everything possible to help elect Barack Obama president. In Ohio, Democratic leaders spent their time touring the state and helping to motivate supporters to keep pushing toward the finish line. Thursday Gov. Ted Strickland teamed up with one-time Ohio senator and “Right Stuff” astronaut John Glenn in a day of county-by-county stops.
“The campaign is going well,” Strickland said in a phone interview Thursday afternoon. “We are taking nothing for granted. I think the election will be very close. We are just going from community to community talking about the importance of this election.” And that’s the answer, Strickland contends — the grass roots – Knock for Barack— door-to-door campaign — that will turn the state to Obama. “I think the Obama grass roots campaign is the most extensive and impressive I have seen,” Strickland said. “I think it will make the difference in the ultimate winner. I told (Obama) a month ago when he called. Both you and McCain will have money for television and for telephoning. I believe what will make the difference in Ohio for you is the grass roots support that exists.” The governor cited 70 field offices and 600 paid staff plus thousands of volunteers. This summer the Obama campaign was the first in the history of a presidential race to open a separate office in Lawrence County, instead of using the party’s local headquarters. Glenn, who went solo Friday in the eastern part of the state, called this election the single most important national campaign in recent history. “I have never known a time when we have needed a change in the direction of the country,” Glenn told The Tribune in a phone interview. “The Republican party used to stand for balanced budgets and low debt. This has been a complete anathema to Republicans and Democrats. We can’t continue the way we are.” Wednesday night Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher made a brief stop at the Ironton Obama campaign headquarters, to make phone calls for the candidate and give a pep talk to the handful of workers there.
Pennsylvania State Director Craig Schmirer reported impressive numbers of on the ground effort for the Keystone State.
Over the past 48 hours, the organization the Obama campaign began building in Pennsylvania months ago kicked into high gear. Powered by people and fueled by a hunger for change, thousands of Pennsylvanians from every corner of the Commonwealth and all walks of life are giving a few hours of their time to turn the page on the failed policies and politics of the past eight years and to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States. Over the weekend, our volunteers knocked on 1,811,801 doors of homes from Erie to Easton, Johnstown to Jenkintown. We also made 1,193,573 phone calls to voters across the state. Unlike the McCain campaign, these aren't negative robocalls sent by the push of a button, anonymously spreading smears and lies. These are live phone calls in which Barack Obama's message of change and his plan to create an economy that rewards work and creates new jobs is laid out by a fellow voter. Over the next 36 hours, we will make even more voter contacts than this weekend. We have 81 offices across the state, many in parts of Pennsylvania that never have seen a presidential campaign set up there before. We have more than 500 staging locations for our grassroots canvass teams, positioned in every corner of the Commonwealth. And we have filled more than 200,000 volunteer-shifts for the final push toward Election Day. The visits of John McCain and Sarah Palin can't compete with this grassroots organization. Our volunteers are combining hard work and creativity to get the word out about Barack Obama. In Pittsburgh and State College, we have a volunteer who has engineered a mobile projector that will allow passersby to send a text message explaining why they are voting for Obama which will then be projected on the sides of buildings. For the last several days, we have had mobile billboards being driven around Philadelphia streets. And the night before Election Day, we will have street teams postering and flyering cities and small towns all across the state.
Missouri supporters keep building on the organizing effort they started earlier this summer to turn the state blue.
In 2008, Missouri has seen 340,000 new voter registrations, 150,000 of which were youth voters. Since the deadline for new voter registration, the Democrats have turned to "get out the vote" operations. “We know that first-time voters overwhelmingly trend towards Democratic candidates,” said Rick Puig, president of the Young Democrats of Missouri. “So our registration efforts were aimed at expanding that electorate effort and our GOTV is designed to turn out those voters.” Puig, along with several other leaders of Democratic student organizations, have said that they are impressed with the Obama campaign’s organization in central Missouri. “The Obama campaign this cycle makes any other campaign I’ve worked on look like a bunch of disorganized guerilla warfare,” Puig said. “The apparatus they’ve built in mid-Missouri is phenomenal.” Democrats have largely been following the blueprint of Claire McCaskill’s successful 2006 Senate campaign. “She taught the Democratic Party how to win statewide as a Democrat,” Puig said. “We have to not win rural voters by overwhelming margins, but we have to show up in a legitimate way.”
Our work is not yet done. After you vote today, volunteer at your local office or help make phone calls to remind others to vote.
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