Please describe your volunteering for Obama experience!

I love reading the posts from volunteers about how inspired they've been while working for Obama. I've just signed up today to bring food to the Obama Central Texas Headquarters, but I'm interested in helping out other ways too. I know that a big part of what needs to be done is making phone calls and going door to door, but I've never heard about the details. Who are you calling and what do you say? What houses do you go to, and what do you talk to people about? Are you asking for donations, or just registering voters, or going to talk about the facts? What do you do when you're faced with questions that you don't have perfect answers for? The idea of being put on the spot intimidates me, and I feel like I would need to have Obama's positions on the issues memorized before I set out to talk to people about them.

Thanks for sharing, and thanks for all of your hard work!

Except the cell phones are hazardous to ones' health. I'm going to another center to make calls if I do more for him on the phone. I'll do data entry in the office. Haven't started walking yet. Going tomorrow. If you don't know the answer to a question, be sure that you take a phone number to your local campaign office who can get the answer. :hi:

I am very proactive. I stop people walking by and ask them, smiling, "Excuse me. Are you registered to vote?" "Have you moved since you registered?"

Most just walked by shaking their heads yes or no, whatever. A few stopped and said, "Oh yeah. I think I do need to register."

Most were already registered, or so they said. A few (including one Latino Marine in uniform!!!) were not voting at all :< . My husband and I double-teamed him, but he just had no interest in voting. We thanked him for his service, blah blah blah..... Holy shit.

One woman said she will not vote for McLame but she's not sold on Obama. I told her everything I could about why she should vote for him, but she remained unconvinced. Her main concern was that her money would go to help people. She was only concerned about HER money. And though I told her Obama would reduce taxes for all but those making over $250k/year, she wouldn't budge. Can't squeeze blood from a turnip, I guess. I still think it was worth the try.

Most people I got to talk to for more than a moment were very enthusiastic about voting and about Obama. A lot of people stopped by on their own and bought bumper stickers and buttons.

I felt so good being there, and recommend being active.

There was an older lady & man holding McCain/Whatshername signs. Another man walked by and said to me, "That lady with that McCain sign made me sick to my stomach. Really, I have indigestion!" I told him, "Me, too!" LOL.

I helped people who came in and was happy to see all the folks in this very red city wanting yard signs and stickers. Did some calling and signed up more volunteers. Helped a few people register.

It was the choir though so no tough questions.

At work, i work in hotel and see people from all over U.S. and canada depending on the situation that is where I talk to people. Because it is my work I have to be careful but I have had some good conversations from just about every state.

I talked to two girls yesterday from Juneau who like Sarah because she has passion...i left it there because I didn't want to start something negative at work.

All summer long I had Obama stickers on my honda scooter and got people asking me about it.

About positions just answer what you know and i find whatever issue you are passionate about talk about that. My issue is the environment so I push hard on that. I have become local "bag lady" at my grocery store and the bag i use the most says "i am helping the environment what are you doing?" i use that bag to start conversations...i even take it to walmart...have had alot of conversations there.

i live in rural area and at first i didn't shop at walmart but now i do sometimes but always use the experience to talk to people. if you don't go where they are how can you talk to them?

Wednesdays we always call women voters. Our computer system has been set up for a week now so it is very easy to make a call and enter the results and move on to the next. Mostly we ask you they are supporting and if they're on the fence, we try to find out what issues concern them and then discuss it.

Canvassing is done by pre-planning a neighborhood and going to specific homes, mostly undecided voters or dems who have not voted in a while to see which way they are leaning. Republicans are also on the list but I have met more than a few of them who are supporting Obama.

First time I went out canvassing, I went with one of the campaign staff people. Now I take other people with me and train them how to do it. It's very easy and it's my favorite part of volunteering.

in North Charleston SC. I believe the first time in 25 years a Democratic Presidential candidate opened an office here. I have tons of photos and plan to upload them here later. I saw about 300 people, we ate good food, listen to great speeches and met other candidates. Hubby and I stuck around and met other people, including one other DU'er and listen to great music.

Will be volunteering at the office shortly. I'm ready to work my butt off. I understand McCain had some breakfast function going on this morning and it was reported, it wasn't full.

but the office just opened. We had our grand opening party on Thursday, so pretty much all week I spent making an Obama wall. I made a collage with 4 poster boards and filled it with lots of information and graphics. It came out great and people gravitate to it when they come in and get an eyeful of information that they probably don't know.

Today the field organizer, another volunteer and I hosted an organizational meeting (at the volunteer's house). 26 people who had not met before got together, learned about the campaign structure, picked leaders for the various jobs and set up voter registration and canvassing for this weekend. It was pretty cool to see how quickly this came togehter - from a bunch of strangers to a working team in two hours! A co-team leader is a former Republican who just could not stand it anymore and who is now an Independent. We thought he would be very persuasive since he strongly believes in the change Obama promises.

The work I have been doing at the local Obama HQ has been fun. Lots of really terrific people, most don't know each other, working together for a common cause that we all believe in. Yes, there are some frictions, but overall it is a very happy place.

When you make calls, you are given a sample script. Usually, you are asking if they support Obama, and if not, who they are supporting and what issues are important to them as citizens. If they are supporters, ask if they would volunteer. Sometimes, like for our organizational meeting or a specific event, you are calling people who are already identified as supporters and just have to make the invitation and find out if they are coming.

With calls, often 50-70% are not home. Very rarely, a ringer makes it into the list and you will get a non-supporter, hangup or refusal to talk. And once a week or so one volunteer will get a hard core anti-Obama nutcase that will not vote for him because "he is Muslim, not an American, or is not eligible to be President." One nut was convinced that Obama could not be President since "the Constitution says he has to be a Christian and he is Muslim." :eyes:

A lot of people like canvassing. I have bad knees so I can't do the walking. I can see that it is probably harder for people to be rude to your face so you'd likely not get doors slammed like we get phones slammed. Again, you get a sample script. Here, we do voter registration and identifying voters that need rides to the polls as we do the canvassing. The canvassers come back into HQ pumped from their experiences, so it must be a good time. I am not sure how they handle specific issues questions. Here at the HQ we just do not get into that - we refer them to the paid staffers or to the issue papers on the web site. (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/)

The call and the walking lists are generally targeted - sorted for Independent, unregistered and undecided usually for the walking lists. For the call lists, they are targeted according to the purpose. If we are trying determine the presidential preference, it will usually be Democratic and Independent voters who are not in our files as supporters. If we are trying to recruit volunteers, it will include only people already identified as supporters. And calling for invitations to events is definitely targeted at supporters and sometimes only at volunteers or at donors.

The call lists are infinitely better than in the Kerry campaign when I did many hours of calls. Then, they just took lists of registered voters by precincts and called with absolutely no sorting. So we got Republicans, Democrats, Independents, everybody. And they did not remove already called people from the lists, so by the week before the election many had been called multiple times and were fed up with hearing from us. I'd get home from working at the HQ and have four messages from various callers with our campaign leaving messages on my phone!

Bless you for taking food! Many of the staff do not get home cooking and are living on food that can be delivered or picked up quickly. And the volunteers put in long hours and appreciate having something to eat when they have come straight from work and intend to work until closing. We're just now trying to set up food donations so there will be good food at HQ for everyone who is working at least a few days a week. People who cannot work in the office are making offers so I hope that will work well for us.

by the end of this month! I think it was getting hard for the organizer not to have a home base here in town. She had to drive an hour this way for the canvasses. This way, the campaign will be able to let people who want to do phone banking do it in a designated office, the organizer is available 24/7 and has walk lists, and people will be able to sign up at a time convenient for them! We also have older people who would like to help out with food and such but haven't been able to because there's been no central location that is always available.

I am very grateful to the campaign for doing this. I've been here my whole life almost (44 years) and have never seen this done before. I am so very thankful and humble to have an office here in our small conservative red Rush Limbaugh Republian town surrounded by rural area! The numbers have been looking promising in our canvasses so maybe that's why they decided to come deeper into red territory! People are just dying for signs and buttons, too! They are very eager to show up these Republicans who've held the reigns for so long in this small city. I am so honored and awestruck by this campaign!

I think we now have three offices in Tallahassee, one in Quincy - and these counties went blue in 2004 and 2006. But we still have lots of unregistered voters and undecided voters that we need to reach.

In other parts of the state they have larger and more offices in many cities since places like Tampa, Jacksonville and Lakeland are very Republican. Florida at the last poll was only one point in favor for McCain and we think we can swing it to Obama. David Plouffe says if we can win Florida we will win the country. We are doing our best!

who's strong Obama, Lean Obama, Undecided, Lean McCain, Strong McCain, Moved, Inaccessible, Not Voting, Not Home, etc. This has usually been giving me the hope that I need to carry on. Even if they're just small samples and I missed a bunch that weren't home, it still makes me feel good. I brush off the ones whose minds I can't change and then focus on all of the people who feel like I do! It encourages me to go on and keep showing my face to people to show them another strong supporter where they might have reservations, even in this somewhat racist area.

Other data I give to the campaign include names, numbers, ages of new voter registrations. Indiana has had over 500,000 this year, so there is definitely something going on. And the polls don't have a hold of these people and we do. I save their names also because we will follow up with them to make sure they go and vote.

I also keep the volunteer lists updated and send it to the people who need to know, like the Dem chair and the other local candidates if they need help. I also send out important dates and information to the volunteer group for events and canvasses for those who have email so they will know what to come to and when.

That's about it. :)

Because I live in a very racist town. Yes I am half American Indian and have two other colored family, and the rest are all white. I do talk to them about Obama but they are racist too. But my grandma and grandpa are for Obama big time. Why my grandma can't have medicare anymore, because she makes too much damn money which is $700 a month from SSI. And my grandpa is a Veteran and don't get a lot of money I think, because they share meds. And both use to be republicans, but not now not ever they say. My grandma just love the Obama's and grandpa dislike McCain. I talk to my lesbian friends told them, they should vote for Obama for their sake. But all my friends are racist, don't ask me why. But they all don't want McCain in there either. I have phone numbers, but too scare to call them, because I am afraid they won't understand me because my disability. I do have a sign in my front yard and a Obama shirt. So when people see me wearing my shirt they ask why I am voting for him and I tell them why. They be like oh ok I see. And I tell them if they want to get to know him and what he want to do for us go to his website.

in Toledo. This is my second time this campaign, although I did canvass for Kerry in 2004.

The canvassing was held in my neighborhood, so I walked over to the house we were to meet at, and we divvied up the list and went out. You walk up to a house with your canvassing partner and knock. You ask whoever answers if he/she is the person on your list and say something like this:

"Hi! I'm ellie with Barack Obama's Campaign for Change, and Nancy and I are going door to door talking to people and finding out how they are going to vote in this election. Do you know who you are voting for?"

And then the person tells you. The answers I have received ranged from "Obama all the way!" to "Not Senator Obama" to "I don't know."

If the person is voting for Obama, then you tell him about Ohio's early voting which starts Sept. 30 to avoid the long lines and potentially bad weather on voting day. Then you ask him if he wants to volunteer. All of this information is logged on the sheet under the person's name.

If the person is voting for McCain, in my experience, these people are pretty rude about it. These are angry people. I usually say thanks and not tell them about early voting. Let McCain's people tell him!

If the person is undecided, I ask him if he has any specific questions about Obama's stand on the issues. We are given a brochure to hand them and of course try and answer their questions. I know a lot just by reading and have referred people to the Obama website. We log any of their concerns on the form under their name.

It is intimidating to start but once you get going, it is OK. People were a lot nicer in my neighborhood than in the last neighborhood I went to. People are going to be rude because they are so angry, but you learn pretty quickly not to take it personally.
In fact, I was really pissed this morning about this stupid bailout and didn't want to go, but it was encouraging and it left me in a good mood!

So, good luck! I feel like I am actually making a difference. I am going to be a poll watcher on election day.

but I created the closed-captioning player on barackobama.com.

I am proud to be able to work with a group like ProjectReadOn on Barack's website, so that hard-of-hearing and non-English-speaking visitors can appreciate what a remarkable man he is.

A voter registration blockwalk, a voter registration drive in a shopping strip mall, and volunteered at a voter registration booth at our city's festival. I started off by going to a local Obama meeting that had someone from the county election office who was there to swear in volunteer county deputy registrars.
I really don't like talking on the phone so I'm not doing phone banks. I feel more comfortable doing stuff in person.