Canvassing for Obama

I spent this past Saturday in Iowa, Canvassing for Barack Obama.

We left around 6 in the morning to make the trip to Iowa.

Iowa is unlike many states in this country in that they do not have a Presidential Primary. They have a Caucus. In a Primary System, a voter just has to get themselves to a polling place on the day of the Primary, get the ballot, into the voting booth, and in the privacy of the voting booth, cast the ballot. If you are homebound or have some other reason why you can't vote on the assigned day, you can do an absentee ballot.

That is not the case with a Caucus. With a Caucus several things are different:
1. You have to show up at the assigned place, on the assigned date at the assigned time.
2. There is no way to absentee vote in a Caucus
3. There is no privacy in a Caucus. You have to declare, in public, the candidate that you support.

So, the important thing to do in Iowa is to find supporters of yours willing to come out, January 3rd, and Caucus in support of the candidate.

That's what I was doing on Saturday, going door to door. The group that I went with was African-American, but there was another group from a different pickup spot in the city that was not. We had everyone from teenagers to Senior Citizens. There were a couple of grandparents who brought their grandchildren along to Canvass with them. We spent Saturday afternoon walking around the town trying to find Obama supporters.

I was assigned to several Senior Citizen buildings, so I was going floor-to-floor, door-to-door. It was definitely an interesting process. I didn't find as may willing canvassers as I had hoped, but I was able to find a majority of people at home, so that I could get information from them and the campaign on the ground in Iowa could follow up.

It was definitely an interesting day, and I enjoyed it.