it only comes every 4 years.

day one of get-out-the-vote. also known as GOTV, but i hate calling it that. the point of acronyms is to save time, ya? if the acronym is as long as the words, what's the point? get out the vote it is.

the sun didn't rise till a good hour after i was hanging out in the parking lot of an abandoned grocery store, helping set up the insides for the expected influx of volunteers. food, tshirts, lit, turf, training. the sun came up, the cars and buses rolled in... more than 800 volunteers smiling and happy, driving as far as 100 miles to knock on doors for their candidate. dedication, embodied, boiled down, with the strongest appearing in one parking lot. excitement!

mid-day came and there were so many volunteers that supplies ran short. i had to run to the main office to get more lit. we ran out of turf- no more doors to knock today. what to do with the volunteers who kept coming? we had to redirect them to other volunteer centers, even though ours was the largest. the volunteers from this site had knocked every door in our wards once already today.

word came down that lines were long at early voting- we need help to keep people around. two carloads went down and we were answering questions, handing out stickers and buttons, and directing people about which line to be in and what ID was needed. police came. the law said 100 feet from the polling site, but the police said 100 feet was two blocks away. their union had endorsed the other. it was walk away or face more hassle, and the intimidation of 5 large white guys in uniform were hurting voting more than anything, so we left. we were within our rights, but our rights mattered less than making sure folks felt comfortable standing there in line.

back to the grocery store where volunteers were still flooding in, and we kept redirecting. we talked about how it was a good problem to have. we should be prepared for tomorrow's crowd. from here on out though, turning out the volunteers is my responsibility and if we go from too many to too few, it's on my shoulders. even with the numbers we got today, nearly 50% of our signed-up volunteers were no-shows. i hope we beat that tomorrow. no pressure, right?