Volunteering- Post 3

• Finally came my last day with Obama's Strike Force, also known as the OSF, as I went out to do some good-old phone-banking. So as I went out on a late October morning I was surprised to find no packets with maps and brochures waiting for me as I expected. Instead there were a few cell phones and slightly different checklists with things like "Left Message" instead of "Not Home." The phones we used were all exactly alike and we spent a good 3 hours calling people and calling people and calling people. This got extremely repetitive, extremely fast; much faster than my experience as a canvasser. But at least I got to sit with some friends to do the phone-banking and make fun of our mistakes... it would have been much more tiresome without friends for company.

• Speaking of my canvassing experience, here is a very happy picture of me going to one special house(it was the last one on my checklist) to change people's minds and get them to vote for Obama!

• And finally, here I am showing off my packet, with the brochures out and in front of me. We were expected to give a brochure to every person we talked to and leave a brochure at every unavailable person's doorsstep, thus we got about 100 of these per packet.

Volunteering- Post 2

• The next Saturday was the 4th of October and I went to the campaign office this day also to volunteer as a canvasser.However they first assigned me to be the guy handing out packets to other volunteer canvassers. This was a much different experience as I spent about an hour talking to all kinds of people, trying to get them a packet nearest to their residences. We also had to check them off a list and write down their phone numbers and districts. After the hour was up it was our turn to go out and canvass.
  
• This time we got a good packet of about 50 houses with around 65 or so people. We were going to be going to a neighborhood in Reston this time so we had to drive a good 15 minutes to get to the right street. We then stopped and got all of our papers together. It was around 10:30 by the time we got there and my friend and I decided to go out and canvass cooperatively around the neighborhood. The actual canvassing took about 3 hours to complete and I was pretty hungry by then so we decided to just quit on the last couple houses. Out of all the houses there were, again, not too many people to actually answer the door as we got about 15 people to open their doors to talk to us. The others were either not home or just decided to ignore us. We only got one rude person who got really pissed off at us asking his opinion on the election. So once we were done, we again counted up the checks and turned our packet in, each heading back to our own houses.
  

Week 6-Election Post

• This will be my final Election Post... as we are in the final few days of the election! So as this is the final post I will giving some final ideas and predictions of who the winner of this election will actually be. So for the presidential race I cuurently believe the winner, after Election Day November 4th, 2008, to be... Barack Obama. Okay there's really no need to doubt my support of Barack Obama this late in the game as I have constantly said that I support, even going and supporting his campaigning effort at my local election station. However, my prediction goes beyond mere support, it actually goes to the national polls, the current economic situation on the personal level, and it also goes to the opponent John McCain's tactics. Senator Barack Obama has done a masterful job of showing just how much change he can bring to the president. Yes, that disgustingly overused word "change." But, as most Obama supporters will say, I truly believe he will be the man to bring the change to the White House. Recent polls are showing that Obama has an 11-point lead over McCain(Gallup.com) and results are showing that Obama has a lead on the early vote count. Now we are a couple of days away from the election so there is no doubt in my mind that Obama will win. It'll be close but Obama's got this one.
  
• As for the other current offices up for election I will also try to predict the winners. In the Senate election there is absolutely no contest in that Warner will absolutely crush Gilmore with at least a 20 % lead. Current polls are showing around a 30% lead for Warner so I trust he'll win it easily(RasmussenReports.com). And in the 10th and 11th District House Races, I believe that the Democrats have a distinct advantage in that both of these districts are slowly turning Democratic as more and more liberals and minorities are moving in. I have not heard much from either of these races' candidates but I would like to say that I personally believe the Republican Frank Wolf to beat Democrat Judy Feder in the 10th, but I would say Democrat Gerry Connolly will triumph over Republican Keith Fimian for the 11th this election. Wolf's win will probably be due to his familiarity with the people and for his more organized appearance to me over Judy Feder's somewhat missing publicity. However the increasing Democratic population will most likely change at least one seat, which I believe will mean a win for Connolly.