I can relate. When I see people coming, I hide. They have probably seen me, too. It is somewhat hard to hide on a first floor that is largely windows!We also had at least one suspicious customer, a boyfriend, or family member, who claimed that the woman in question was not registered to vote. Donald pointed out to me that all of the people on our list had come from voter registration rolls. We just had to hope that our voter would vote anyhow.Donald and I each had a lot of time to catch up with what the other had been doing over the years. Donald was quite intent on the job at hand, but there were long distances between some houses. The day was sunny and the temperature was at least 70 degrees F. There were still lots of fall colors. It was a glorious day to be out canvassing! One of my favorite voter locations was a run-down apartment complex that followed the motel model – all of the doors were accessible from the outside. A number of apartments were vacant. The first person we encountered was so enthusiastic about having had the chance to vote that she sounded angry – angry at the past eight years of terrible governance. There were also some men just hanging around in the courtyard. I wondered why they were not at work. Some of them had already voted. The people who had voted were proud to have voted. We thanked them heartily. At this apartment building, I felt my whiteness keenly, or should I say my college-town-ness. There were other white people there, but I would be surprised if any of them had been to college.While I was willing to knock on each door until I was sure no one would answer, Donald was ready to leave a door hanger after a shorter period. He explained that when he had phone-canvassed, he had gotten a sense of how much time to devote to any one voter. He admitted that canvassing door-to-door was different. Never having canvassed before, I was eager to give each of our voters a chance to interact with us if they so wished. I had forgotten that people tend not to appreciate canvassers at their door!An important reason for efficiency and judicious allotment of time to each voter was that our data sheets would later be used by phone canvassers to pester people we had been unable to contact and who had said they would vote. If we were not efficient, we could not get the data sheets to the phone canvassers in a timely fashion. Later, when we had handed in our packets, I saw no phone bank. I am not sure what was up with that. Perhaps the phone canvassers were in some room of the headquarters that I could not see, but I am skeptical.I had expected the neighborhoods in Wayne to be more depressed, although I had no good reason to make such an assumption. For the most part, Wayne, MI is well kept. The residential neighborhoods were pleasant and clean. The worst location we visited was a dingy apartment building on a four-lane drag. Just as we stopped to verify the address, three grungy white men spilled out on to the sidewalk, climbed into a beat up old car, and drove away. I wondered aloud whether any of them were on our list.Once inside, we were surprised to see a door with around eight sticky-notes with admonishments such as, “No pill heads”, “No junkies”, “No drunks”, and “No jail birds”. I was so astonished and pleased to have seen something truly interesting that I pulled out my iPhone and took a photograph. In the dim hallway, I had difficulty holding the phone still enough to get a clear photo. We went through that building in a hurry, never knocking more than once before leaving a door hanger. Every other area we visited that day seemed quite nice and safe by comparison.I had to convince Donald not to give up on an apartment building whose superintendent would not let us in. We would have to stand in the entry way and dial each person’s apartment number instead. Donald was skeptical that this was a good use of time. I knew that there would be a number of elderly people. It seemed like our best chance of finding people who needed rides to the polls. We were in a position to offer rides. I promised Donald that we would spend no more than ten minutes on it. We dialed each number one by one. We completed our task in just over ten minutes, but no one needed a ride. I do not think that many of the elderly residens were going to be voting, either. When we were finished, Donald realized that we’d probably spent less time calling these people than it would have taken to trudge from door to door, and floor to floor, as we had already done in two other apartment hi-rises.An annoying theme of my day was having to find public restrooms three times. I had tried to minimize my liquids, but it was a tough situation. Three or four hours into our run, I began to feel dehydrated, and needed to drink increasing amounts of water. Fortunately, I always found a bathroom before it became an emergency. Left to my own devices, I will find a way to pee whether or not a toilet is available. However, as an Obama representative, “finding a way” meant finding restrooms, not squatting in some weeds.One of the restrooms I found was a Pizza Hut. My faith that I would be OK without Donald in sight had become great enough that I offered to catch up with him while he covered a house several hundred yards away. Not long after, I suggested that we split up for awhile to cover two different areas, hoping to save time. It was getting late and we wanted the phone canvassers to have our data.Whereas in the middle of the day, a few people had already voted, near the end, most of the people I saw face to face had already voted. When we were finally finished, I was quite hungry, Donald had blisters, and we were both dehydrated. We sank down onto the curb by the Dairy Queen where we had been dropped off. We called our fearless leader, Adam, for a ride. While we waited, we talked about our day. We had both enjoyed it, and ultimately had been good “buddies”. Our ride proved to be problematic. She called on my iPhone, and I immediately handed her over to Donald, who was better with maps and directions. Even he had trouble with her, however. She did not seem to know where she was, which made it almost impossible for Donald to direct her.When she finally arrived, we learned that she was a mother with two small children. Donald squeezed in back with the kids, and I sat up front. She might have been from Africa, judging from her accent. She was quite enthusiastic about the campaign, and had been putting in many long hours after working full time each day. She insisted that Obama had better win – she had worked far too hard for him not to!Back at the headquarters, we thought we would have a chance to eat and relax. Next is the story of what happened instead.
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