I got up at 6:10am to get the 6:45am commuter rail ride that got into Wisconsin at 8:15am, then walked to the office, where I got a walk pack that'd set me up for the next like 3 hours.
The walkpacks were "semi-blind", which means that you went to the doors as indicated (knocking for supporters, avoiding people who weren't supporters or who were marked "don't knock"), but going to any unmarked doors, since the reasoning was that since the area is 75-80% democratic, if you turned up new voters, they'd mostly be on your side.
They gave me 2, since they said that so many doors were already crossed off (b/c people early voted, for example), I'd get through them in no time...
As I was getting ready to get organized to go out, my one friend who I know from the sex documentary series who's into BDSM showed up with a couple of his friends, so we talked for a second, then I headed out.
My 1st turf was west of the railroad tracks in a mixed working class area (white, black, some latino), and I was very conscientious about going to every door, so I was busy from like 9am until 1:45pm (!), but I met a handful of voters who I was able to get info to on same-day registration, their polling place location, and everything like that.
I walked back and took like a 45minute lunch where I ate some cold lasagna and pasta salad out of the fridge, and found out that 2 of my friends (and a 3rd they brought with them) had been in the office just a while earlier, and had been sent up to a campaign office in a city like an hour north since they were short on volunteers up there.
After my lunch, I got a new walk packet in this condo complex just west of the campaign office - they didn't have that many turfs left in walking distance, or at all! - so I basically spent the next hour buzzing buzzers and occasionally reaching someone to find out they had already voted.
After that, I went back, and they got me *another* walk packet in that same large condo/planned development complex, and I spent more time buzzing buzzers and occasionally finding out that someone had voted.
When I got back around 6pm-ish, the office was empty, since a half hour earlier anyone left had been sent to the staging office on the other end of town. Since no-one there had a car right then, I helped peel tape off the floor, and after 10 minutes a (white) guy my age with a beard and a leather cowboy hat came in, and after we had both refreshed ourselves with pulled pork sandwiches, we got into his truck (after he cleared some crap out), then headed over to the next office.
It was like 6:30pm by then, and since polls closed at 8pm, we got walkpacks next to each other and went out with flashlights to a nearby neighborhood to round up any last vote, with people who hadn't been contacted at all or people who had said earlier in the day that they vote (people wrote notes on this), to make sure they voted.
It was rainy and dark and I walked around like that full hour in an working class area to the near southwest of downtown, and the most I did was talk with a few people on the list and confirm that they voted... Though it hadn't been since that morning that I had met anyone who hadn't voted, my partner talked with a girl who was waiting for her boyfriend to get home so they could go vote together, and as he left, the guy's car pulled up in the driveway.
As we were in that one fellow canvasser's truck, he had some newsradio channel on, and I couldn't believe it was election night already, and I didn't feel like I was there, and I was just a bundle of nerves, and I kept wishing there was more time to prepare for the campaign.
Around that time, I found out that the people I knew who had driven up and had decamped to another city weren't going to be meeting up with me, they were super tired and were driving home instead.
Back at the campaign office, we dropped off our packs and talked with everyone who was there - including that one highschooler, her twin sister, and her boyfriend, who couldn't volunteer that day but had dropped by the office to see how everything was going.
Also there was a guy from California who had flown in to volunteer for the recalls, and who had come back again with his girlfriend and even more family.
There was a (black) engineer, too, who was talking with staffer, and he said he'd give me a ride to the election night watch party, and he was lingering forever, but I had to wait for him since the (white) guy with the beard and a cowboy had to go get his girlfriend and he only had one seat in his truck.
At the watch party, I ran into a ton of people and I had free beer and calmed down, but after all the Wisconsin results came in, it was pretty much downhill and people were breaking up by like 10:30am.
The California guy I know was in a group, and he said he'd be happy to drive me back to the commuter rail for the 11:30pm train, so I took him up on that, waited around the station (including a quick break to go find an alley to piss in; there were no public restrooms and I had to wait 20min for the train), hopped on the train, and was back in the city around 1am, home a bit thereafter, then took a shower and unpacked and relaxed and ate ramen noodles and was in bed by 2:30am.
I missed all the speeches since I was on the train! I'll catch up on YouTube though...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment