Getting out the vote

This is really a knitting blog so I don't want to get too political. It is that time in the US though - just a few more days until we pick our next president. Whatever your political views, make sure you get out and vote.

Today I went knocking on doors for the Obama campaign. It was a beautiful, sunny fall day.

A lot of our trees here in Oregon are evergreen, some of the others have lost their leaves already. Others are beautiful colors.

It was a nice day for a walk around town.

This was my first time canvassing this fall. From May to October a friend and I did voter registration at the Corvallis Farmers Market every Wednesday and Saturday.

The band isn't with us, they just set up next to us. After the registration deadline passed on October 16, it felt nice to take a bit of a break from politics.

Plus I'm the Benton County Coordinator for the Democratic Party of Oregon Protect the Vote program, so I had to recruit and train volunteers to watch our elections office handle the ballots as they come in. Last Monday I got to watch the pre-election certification of the machines that count the ballots. Benton County ballots are the "fill in the dot" type and they use optical scanners to count the ballots.

Today I knocked on 38 doors, most of whom weren't home. I talked to 12 voters and collected two ballots. Here in Oregon we do entirely vote-by-mail, so everyone received their ballot in the mail a couple of weeks ago. Ballots can be mailed back or put in any of the ballot boxes around town. Postmarks don't count so it's too late to mail them now - they need to be put in a ballot box.

I dropped mine in the box at the public library on Friday and it already shows as received. Anyone in Oregon can check if their ballot has been received at oregonvotes.gov. A lot of other people have also already voted. Benton County elections currently shows:

47.99%

Ballots Accepted - 25,025

Eligible Voters -  52,147

When knocking on doors, we can accept ballots from voters. While the campaign sets up canvassers with ballot receipts, I still can't imagine giving my ballot to some stranger who knocks on my door. But people do it all the time. I was very careful with the two ballots entrusted to me and put them in the ballot box on 5th Street by the police station.

It was a rewarding afternoon, but I'm beat. The area I was in is near campus (Oregon State University) so there are quite a few student apartments. I swear, almost all the doors in my turf were on the second or third floor. I climbed a lot of stairs today!

And there's day four of NaBloMoPo. Will I make it through day 5? Come back tomorrow to find out!