Want to get involved and volunteer for Obama, but short on time or need to stay home? No problem! Obama/Biden '08 makes volunteering easy with their new online organizing tool: Neighbor to Neighbor.
Here's some background on Neighbor to Neighbor as described to me:
The tool is built around a pretty simple concept: online activists should be able to talk to potential volunteers or undecided voters whenever they want and in their own communities, if at all possible.As a tool, Neighbor to Neighbor enables online supporters to find lists of voters in their neighborhood or in a battleground state with only a couple clicks. The tool can be used either for neighborhood canvassing or for phonebanking. Each "campaign" in the tool comes with a list of voters, a script for the volunteer, and a map and flyer if it's a walk campaign.
All of this work is directly integrated with the rest of our field operation. Once a person makes voter contact, they're likely to be contacted by field organizers and incorporated into our larger team structure on the ground.
In decades to come, political scientists will look back on the Obama/Biden '08 as the first real 21st century campaign. Bottom up, infinitely networked, locally focused, across all 50 states, and massively personal, online and in the field, this is an incredible campaign to be involved in.
However, the data you input at mybo.com (the barackobama.com website) is not reconciled with the data in the VAN that the DPVA is using as the basis for field work.
For those looking to work in NoVa, I would highly suggest you go through the local campaign offices, field teams, and your local county and DPVA structures to volunteer. One of the most frustrating aspects of field work is re-doing work or re-canvassing or re-phoning people that have already been hit. It annoys the people that are getting the avalanches of calls and visits, and it can discourage volunteers.
There are precinct teams forming in every precinct in NoVa, and hopefully in other parts of Virginia as well. Some will be better and more organized than others. All I know is that the local organizers here in Alexandria want to work the precinct using the VAN and votebuilder, not the neighbor-to-neighbor tool.
I am a firm believer in trying to build a Democratic base through consistent voter contact by canvassing at the precinct level. However, right now the main goal is to maximize our volunteer hours and canvass and phoning times with as little duplication of effort as possible. In the base precincts of Virginia (NoVa, Hampton Roads/Va Beach, Richmond, C'ville/Albemarle), doing so through the local campaign offices is your best bet of doing so.
For those good souls working in less organized areas of Virginia, then by all means please talk to your neighbors and neighborhoods using the tools at mybo.com
Neighbor-to-neighbor is a great idea, but like I said there are some kinks in making sure that all the data go to the same place. That's currently not happening.
For those that are looking to get more involved, especially in apartment or condo buildings that are closed to outside canvassers due to security, PLEASE volunteer at your local office and talk to a field organizer about focusing on those buildings. They'll love you for it.
Early this summer I tried to plug into a DSC online canvassing effort, but the API at that point was not very user-friendly and ultimately froze me out from inputting my data. My guess is that these national database canvassing tools are simply not coordinated effictively with the local Obama and Democratic county teams.
The local Obama and Combined Campaign offices are trying to coordinate their canvassing walk sheets in NOVA and are having some success, but organization is still spotty in many precincts. The data sheets get filled in and the data gets put into the system, but it is unclear whether the local offices are really able to focus in a precinct level/granular way on those voters who need a little extra help with an absentee ballot request, advice for a student away in college, a ride to an early/absentee polling station, or a ride to the polls on election day. There are surely a few dozen such potential Obama voters in each precinct.
A lot of effort is being devoted to canvassing and phone banking in NOVA, but we'll have to raise the level of our game in the final GOTV stretch.
Anyway, let's keep canvassing through our local Dem campaign offices.