I am very glad Obama had such an organization. The bit about the chair is especially good to me because my husband could not have stood if he had to wait long. But as someone who has lived in Germany, I understand how such efficiency can be chilling. To this day, Germans have very strict laws about personal data, and many do not trust the government even with regular census data and work to thwart it. When I was there, there were articles in popular magazines about how it would be a shame if any of the following things made your census form unusable by the government and then the article proceeded to outline many ways to seem to comply with the census but not give them a usable form, from chopping off the bottom line so the answers would not line up, to spilling coffee on the form so it would not go through the scanners correctly. They know this is not the same government that perpetrated the holocaust, and even so, they don’t trust it with their personal data.
I find the current administration scary with their disregard for constitutional protections. One saving grace is that they really do not seem to be that well organized. Imagine Cheney with an organization as cooly efficient with data as the Obama campaign?
Those lists came in mighty handy while going door to door getting people out to vote. We worked off of lists of identified Democrats, and spent all day, making sure every one of them voted. And, every single person I spoke to had voted or we brought them right then and there.
What the lists helped out with were not having to return to homes where no one was there to tell us they’d already voted. The lists still took a couple of hours to make their way out to the knockers.
On the whole voters and crossing off names thing. It really isn’t about voter fraud, it seems more about making sure their canvassing efforts were paying off.
My mom volunteers for the League of Women Voters to drive people to the polls. From what I have gathered, the LOWV gets their information from public records and the campaigns themselves. The LOWV is non-partisan and cannot endorse candidates, but can encourage GOTV efforts.
Through the campaigns and their own efforts, voters who cannot drive or do not have a ride to the polls are identified and volunteers are given their information so that they can get a ride to the polls. From what Mom told me, they organized and charted routes for everyone who needed a ride to and from the polling places. She also made sure that 2 local retirement communities had enough shuttle bus service to see that all residents who wanted to vote were given the opportunity to get to the polls.
The campaign canvassers can ask for the LOWV to get someone to the polls. They can’t ask to NOT have someone driven to the polls. The campaigns can also call back and check with the voter that they did in fact get a ride to the poll.
No one has mentioned it yet, but I am not the only one who is happy to have a president who has in fact smoked pot [my last liberal front to stand on]. Not only that, but he said he inhaled, frequently, and wasn’t that the point? Great response!
Would you care to explain that statement, Princhester? How on earth is the symbolism of clothing and how it’s worn “woo woo horseshit?” Case in point:
I worked at a place where a fellow interviewing for a job wore a cap saying, “If you find me asleep wake me up and give me a beer.” He did not say aloud that he did not really want the job, but how would you interpret that hat in that situation?
That’s a more blatant example of symbolism in clothing, but there are real, non-woo-woo studies that show people make conscious and unconscious decisions based on appearance, and there is truth in the advice “dress like who you want to be.” Obama would not have been elected dog catcher if the only difference in his campaign was that he dressed like Flavor Flav. Or even in a cheap, rumpled suit.* What turned peoples minds watching the debates was that he came off as “presidential,” not just in his speech and demeanor, but in appearance.
Okay, the man coulda pulled off either look. He’s a damn clothes horse. But it woulda been harder.
Hey did they not want to put the entire family up on the stage? Did they seriously want them all in a thrift store wardrobe? You want to play you have to pay.
These are all second- or third-hand reports from an anonymous source or sources that may be worried about their own reputations (since Palin’s poor campaign performance has already been blamed on aides mishandling her) or who may simply just not like the woman. Wake me when someone is willing to stand behind these statements publicly.
This is also not new tech, though maybe the Obama campaign did a better job of keeping it updated. I did the same thing for the Kerry campaign in '04 (that is, I sat in the polling station with a list of people and asked the people who came through to vote what their names were - if they told me, and it was one on the list, I crossed it off. I think maybe my shift ended at noon and I gave them the list then - I don’t remember.
I should also note that, contra what some people have said about the scary effectiveness of the Obama campaign or whatever, the one weekend I went out knocking on doors in Indiana, towards the end of the election cycle when you’d think they’d have gotten the lists pretty well-vetted, there were still a lot of people who had moved, or who were like 99 years old and pretty obviously long-dead, and so forth on our door-to-door knock list.
