Today we have a guest blog from another campaign volunteer, Zoey Wagner. -DJR

Saturday, I experienced politics at its finest.

First of all, I’m Zoey. I’m a 13-year-old girl who just happens to be hosting 20 or so Democrats in my house, where they make calls, hold meetings, and plan canvass outings. Not that I mind, of course. I love meeting them, hearing their background stories about why they support President Obama, and learning about their brushes with fame and adventure.

One guy I met has the son who made the famous Dwight bobblehead on NBC’s ‘The Office.” Another woman is on a first-name basis with Olympic athlete Misty May Trainer. These past few weeks are sure to be some of my most memorable, where I was lucky enough to experience a sliver of what it’s like to be on the road to what could be one the most significant races in history.

I tried my hand at phone banking (where I was cursed out more than once), went canvassing in downtown des moines, took field trips out to the early voting stations at Harding Hills strip mall, and even managed to meet a few celebrities along the way.

Although my work in the volunteering department is a walk in the park compared to what a good amount of the young adults do at the campaign headquarters everyday, I have to admit I had no idea how much effort goes into even a little volunteering. Maybe i’m just a wimp (I probably am), but when we go out canvassing, it isn’t just a stroll up and down the street. Nope, we walk. Like, a lot. And they don’t care if you decided to wear ridiculously uncomfortable shoes or that your hair frizzes up in this humidity, you will be finishing the entire darn packet whether you like it or not.

Saturday was one of this full-out Obama days. I had been looking forward to volunteering all week, and this definitely was no let down. My morning started out by me waking up to the lively chatter of Dave, James and Bob, and I made my way downstairs, grumbling something about how no human should be at my house this time in the morning. But before I could wipe the sleep out of my eyes, people started pouring through the door and I was, yes, put to work.

Not that I could complain- I honestly don’t think a person could have as much fun yelling on the curb of Hy-Vee as I could. Dave gave Ashlin, my step sister, and I a ride to the Harding Hills Hy-Vee where we joined two other kids and another volunteer, Lindsey, to hold up giant VOTE letters and “Honk for Obama” signs, encouraging drivers to vote. Later that day, after a quick lunch break and eating an entire box of Oreos, Ashlin, Dave, Ruth and I headed out further into Beaverdale to get the day’s canvassing done.

Some were very sweet and polite to me – I think my age has something to do with it – some people? Not so much. “I wouldn’t vote for Obama if he was the last person on earth,” one man said in between curse words. This was my first negative response, I have to admit, so I didn’t really know what to do besides nod my head, bite my tongue and shuffle away.

The rest of the day ended up good, though. Great, actually. Dave later met up with us, not too long after the great anti-Obama debacle, and after reminding me to button up my coat he informed me that someone would later be picking Ashlin and I up to take us to a LGBT For Obama event – one where we would be meeting the stars of my favorite tv show,  Glee.

I knew that the event was going on, but I thought my chances of actually getting to go were slim to none. But leave it up to the volunteers of this campaign to find a way – these really are some of the nicest people.

Needless to say, the entire event was a fairy tale. It took place in one of those fancy law firms downtown, and everyone was so nice, not to mention I was the first one to meet Jenna Ushkowitz and Kevin Mchale. And I can definitely tell you that as soon as I got to the house I told all of the volunteers every last detail of the big meeting.

I have to say my only regret about volunteering for the Obama campaign is not volunteering sooner. I’ve had a ball getting to take part in what could be a historical election, and meeting all these wonderful people, and I’m definitely thankful that Ruth suggested that I come canvassing that one Saturday morning two weeks ago.

Alex, a 13-year-old student at Meredith Middle School, trawled for candy in this eye-catching get-up:

Alex in his voting booth costume

The final tally in the liberal Beaverdale neighborhood of Des Moines, Iowa stood at 114 Obama, 23 Romney.

“We spent a couple hours on Saturday night,” his mother said. “We did contact paper on the box.”

Even a few kids parted with newly-collected Halloween candy to cast their sugary votes.

A plea for early voting on the back of the costume

I canvassed 88-year-old Helen Getta’s house over the weekend. Helen had a problem: she had requested the mail-in ballot weeks ago but it had never arrived, she was certain of it. 

“I get the mail myself,” she told me. I took her phone number and noted her address. I promised her that if she wanted to vote in this election, she would get the chance. 

This afternoon I called her. “There are a couple ways to sort this out,” I told her. “I could give you the county auditor’s number and you can request a new ballot or I can do a three-way call with all of us and help you get it sorted out.” 

“If it’s a hassle to do, let’s just forget it,” Helen said.

I nearly fainted. “No, no hassle at all,” I told her. “It only takes a few minutes. Let’s go ahead and get that call started.” I conferenced in the Polk County auditor’s office. 

“I know I didn’t throw it away, I know better than that,” Helen told the woman who answered at the auditor’s office.

In minutes, Helen’s lost ballot had been canceled and a new one had been issued to be mailed out this afternoon.

“I’m 88 years old and I’ve been a Democrat all my life,” she said. “The Democrats have been good for farmers. I grew up poor and later we did a little better, but I kinda was raised that way.” 

I cast my vote for Barack Obama early at the Harding Hills Hy-Vee on Saturday morning.

Iowa voting requirements are some of the most permissive in the country. Under Iowa law, your voting residence is the place you declare to be your home with the intent to remain there for any amount of time. With proper ID, residents can even register on Election Day right before voting.

Inside the polling station, I signed a few bits of paperwork and was issued a ballot, no ID required. I went into the voting both to cast my vote privately, although the BEAT MITT t-shirt I had been wearing minutes earlier may have given my allegiance away.

It would have been faster and easier to vote a straight Democratic ticket by filling in the appropriate bubble, but I decided to check off the Democrats individually, saving Obama – Biden for last and using black ink only per the county auditor’s instructions.

As regular readers know, my biggest reason to support Obama is his support for gay marriage equality, a sharp contrast to Mitt Romney’s opposition. Although I don’t actually believe Romney is much of a culture warrior, Romney’s easy adoption of the extreme right’s bigotry allowed him to harvest their votes, then morph once again into a moderate just in time for the general election. While Obama has done his fair share of waffling and weaseling on the marriage equality issue, he has been more consistent with his principles. I was also impressed by Obama’s foreign policy accomplishments, particularly the liberation of Libya through partnerships with European nations.

On Saturday I also voted to retain David Wiggins. He’s one of the Iowa Supreme Court justices who struck down a law barring same sex marriage in the state. He’s in the middle of a fierce and probably doomed effort to keep his seat because of that decision – two of his colleagues were ousted in the 2010 election.

I spent rest of the day with a group of teenagers, part of a souped-up visibility push for the last day of early voting. We demonstrated with giant letters spelling out “Vote” to passing motorists. I snuck away from my primary job – waving around a giant V and an O – to actually go and vote myself.

Pushing for the early vote at Harding Hills

The young ladies in our group performed the “honk dance” and chalked a running tally on the concrete retaining wall – over two hundred approving honks in a few hours.  We were cold but boisterous.

“Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.” – Darth Vader

The Obama campaign’s data-driven approach to ground campaigning has been hailed as a miracle of 21st century electioneering. The campaign, it is said, uses cutting edge “microtargeting” technology to prospect, classify, woo, and ultimately turn out supporters to vote Obama.

The subject of many fawning press accounts, the Obama database makes educated guesses about the political sensibilities of voters based on their ages, registration affiliations, and their declared allegiances to campaign workers – along with a host of other factors. The entire operation aspires to classify voters on two different spectrums – how strongly they support the president and how likely they are to actually vote. A strong Obama supporter with a sporadic voting record might get a visit from a canvasser to get registered and request a mail-in ballot. A voter the database believes is wavering might get a persuasion call from a volunteer making the case for the president.

The glowing accounts in the newspapers conjure up visions of hip young geeks parked in front of gleaming banks of computers, winning elections with the click of a mouse. Still, amidst these hymns and hosannas, I wonder if the implementation of the data-driven technique is as brilliant as advertised. My field level experience suggests that rather than having bins of voters sorted neatly by candidate preference and voting habits, the campaign has agglomerations of voters that share similar characteristics but are by no means homogeneous.

The sophisticated techniques the press describes (like using data to tailor phone pitches to voters) are things the campaign aspires to but fails to execute properly, at least in my field level view. The irony is that the “old-fashioned” way of doing things – before powerful databases – could possibly be more effective than all that tedious mucking about with low quality data.

An example: In the small neighborhood Ruth oversees, we have contacted those the database fingers as allies so many times, some are stale contacts. It is sometimes more fruitful to go to work on Joes and Janes off the street than ask our supporters one more time if they want to volunteer or if they want to vote early.

We’ve reached the point of saturation

It is impossible (at least for me) to say which method is empirically more effective: A spirited yet flawed attempt at a targeted, data-driven approach or using more old-fashioned techniques. I can only say that the drawbacks of driving a small universe of voters insane by calling them every day are very obvious at the field level. But even that oversaturation could be just a particularly flagrant byproduct of a successful nanotargeting campaign.

Football coach Woody Hayes used to say, “Only three things can happen when you pass and two of them are bad.” And it’s true, a coach watching the introduction of the forward pass in 1906 might see an interception and conclude, wrongly, that throwing the football is a terrible way to run an offense – too many risks with that precious ball! That coach’s error would be to spot an obvious drawback but miss the advantages that a well-developed passing game offers.

The database, though, aspires to a level of sophistication that is unattainable when its primary users are volunteers who have had perhaps ten minutes of instruction from a harried junior staff person. The data game remains a work in progress for the Obama campaign, but a potent one.

The young campaign staffers call him Fast Eddie.

Ed Schaffer, a veteran who’s rarely seen without his Vietnam cap, works out of the Obama campaign’s Eastside office three or four times a week. He rises at 4 a.m., no alarm clock needed. “I like to get my day over before the races start,” he says, having spent 20 years as a horse trainer. He’s been known to finish up a canvassing shift and head straight for nearby Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino.

“Fast” Ed Schaffer

Before he retired, Ed worked at the casino as part of its banking staff but says he got too old to keep up. “They had these people on the computers when I had a ten key adding machine. Modern technology just outgrew me. I stopped the thievin’ though.”

As for the mysteries of the internet, Ed says he’s “henpecked around a little bit” on his home computer, but mostly cedes that territory to his wife. “It’ll be forty years in July,” he says of his marriage.

Growing up, Ed was one of only three Democrats in his extended family. “I was a free thinker from a young age,” he likes to say. “Been a Democrat all my life, since LBJ. I wasn’t even old enough to vote and I took cupcakes around with LBJ written on ’em.”

Ed quit high school as a sophomore to join the Navy during the Vietnam war. At just 17 years old, he needed to get permission from his parents to join the service. “My mother was glad to get rid of me,” he says. “I wanted to see the bright lights. I knew there was more to life than tumbleweed and grasshoppers.”

Ed spent the next several years as a chef in the Navy, then took a job at a packaging plant butchering hogs. It was union work, good for a recently married man. He’d finish off his shift at the plant and “work the GOTV for the union” during campaign season.

Recently, Ed was working an apartment building when a woman answered the door. “She looked to be about twenty,” Ed says, “with a youngster peering around each leg and her stomach looking like it was about to pop out a third.” Ed tried unsuccessfully to sweet-talk the woman into voting. A few doors down, though, he spoke to a “Bosnian gal.” (Des Moines has a large population of Bosnian immigrants.)

While the Bosnian didn’t speak much English and wasn’t a citizen, she wanted to help somehow. “I just pointed down the hall,” Ed says, and the Bosnian woman convinced her neighbor to vote. Ed left the building soon after with a voter registration and a mail-in ballot request in his hand.

On another canvassing tour, Ed visited a low income apartment complex but no one seemed to be home. Ed befriended a boy who looked to be around ten. “He found out what I was doing and who I was for,” Ed says. “He’d kick the doors and scream, ‘Obama, Obama, Obama.'” Most of the people were home, it turned out, just too shy to talk to a stranger. The mail-in ballot was “a big seller” for many of the residents who weren’t fluent in English because they could ask for help completing the ballot, then mail it in.

Ed’s young helper had made the difference. “I took him down to the QuikTrip and bought him a pop and a hot dog. I gave him a campaign button and you’d a thought I gave him a million dollars,” Ed says.

A three-day early voting push at Drake University ends Thursday afternoon.

Student Bulldogs, even out-of-state Bulldogs, can register and vote at the Olmsted student center on campus until 3 p.m.

The excitement peaked Wednesday when Reggie, a real bulldog sporting a navy Obama t-shirt, made the rounds on campus.

The excitement of early voting was apparently too much for Reggie, though. Surrounded by a group of fawning young women, he threw up a few minutes into his Drake visit.

I sat down with Julianne Klampe, the vice president of Bulldogs for Barack and Taylor Crow, the president of Drake College Republicans.

Julianne Klampe, left, and Taylor Crow

I asked Taylor why she supports Mitt Romney.

“My parents are involved and my church is,” the sophomore said. “I just align myself more with his things, with his issues. Are you plugging your ears?” she demanded of Julianne.

Julianne, a 19-year-old from Minnesota, rattled off a string of Barack Obama’s first-term achievements  – the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women, student loan reform. Then she interrupted herself. “I feel like he genuinely cares,” she said. “I know that’s a little much to say about him when I’ve only shaken his hand, but I do.”

Taylor said she feels outnumbered on the heavily Democratic campus, but Julianne said it’s only a matter of perception. “For me it feels like you guys are more involved. I have three Republican roommates.”

Julianne vs. Taylor, an elemental clash

The young women had to go to class, but Julianne planned to keep working to turn out the vote. “My second class is pretty worthless. I’ll probably be on Facebook, building for more volunteers.”

Becca Lewis, a 20-year-old neuroscience major, still wasn’t sure who she’ll vote for. Her parents, she said, “usually keep it to themselves. I’m pretty sure they’re Democrats.”

She didn’t like Mitt Romney’s opposition to gay marriage equality. “I also don’t agree with the whole Planned Parenthood issue on Romney’s side,” she said. Romney has pledged to end federal support for the non-profit, which provides access to women’s health services that include abortion.

Undecided Becca Lewis

But she was also uncertain about Obamacare, Obama’s signature health care legislation. “Since I do work in a pharmacy, I see a lot of health care issues,” she said. She wasn’t sure if Obamacare would help or hurt with the price of costly prescriptions.

She didn’t watch much of the debates, she said, relying instead on “Facebook and other ways to be updated.”

Early Voting  

Olmsted Student Center

9 a.m. – 3 p.m. 

Register and Vote, No ID needed

It’s just past 3:30 on Wednesday, with 13 days left until the election, when Iowa Democratic Party Chair Sue Dvorsky walks into the Obama field office.

“I finished up my work a little earlier today and I’ve got two hours,” she says. “What do you need me to do?”

Sue stands 4’11” in person but is larger than life in Iowa state politics. A retired special ed teacher, she negotiated on behalf of a teachers union and been active in Democratic circles for decades. “I was born that way,” she says. “My nickname at home was Sarge. I am by temperament and by personality and by training an organizer.”

Sue and I get into her white Prius to make the drive to the Harding Hills Hy-Vee. One of the Game of Thrones fantasy novels is in her back seat. “I read them pathologically,” she says.

She puts on a Bruce Springsteen cd for the ride to the Hy-Vee. “I’m at the right age,” she says as “We Take Care of Our Own” blasts.

“A couple of days ago [the Romney camp] started this ridiculous meme about closing the gap,” Sue says. “I do not believe that is true.

“I think everybody inside always knew it was going to get this close, but it’s easy to get caught up in the Twitter and the blogs,” she says. “But I am absolutely confident that we have got this. Barack Obama is a very good closer. Betting against him is a sucker’s bet.”

The mother of two daughters, Sue is passionate about the choice issue. “We’re middle class people,” she says of herself and her husband. “We could fly [our daughters] to Vermont or Massachusetts if they were ever to need anything.” But  women in lesser economic circumstances could lose access to reproductive services if Mitt Romney’s carries out his plan to defund Planned Parenthood, and it rankles Sue greatly.

At Harding Hills, Sue shakes hands with the volunteers already on station and appropriates a red, white and blue early voting sign. She tells me we should split up so we can provide most effective visibility to the site for passing traffic. She stands alone, 4’11” tall, as cars race by on Martin Luther King, Jr. Parkway, her sign held high above her head.

On our way back to the office, Sue notes that two different cars asked her for clarification about where the polling station was and turned in to go vote. “That’s two I feel good about,” she says.

At the office, Sue gets a list of people who have previously indicated some interest in volunteering. The campaign is pushing hard to build up a large mass of volunteers for the final four days of the campaign. Sue’s task is to extract a firm commitment from the “potential vols.”

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Sue Dvorsky working the phones

“This is Sue Dvorsky, I’m the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, calling to thank you for signing up to help us reelect the president,” she starts each call.

“Two person hours from you, two person hours from someone else, it adds up.” Sue has decades of experience chasing volunteers and cajoling them into helping. One person Sue reaches only wants to do data entry, the least critical task of the big weekend. “I will push your comfort zone a little bit and ask you to do an hour or two of calling,” Sue says. “That would be so terrific,” she says when the volunteer finally agrees.

“This is the time,” she tells another volunteer. “We are on a narrow, narrow path here, but I know we can get this thing done. I’m convinced we’re ok.”

Sue flashes a thumbs up as she finishes up a successful recruitment call. “Boom,” she says after she hangs up. “Oh, I love doing this.”

Among ladies of a certain age in Des Moines, Iowa, it’s a divide almost as stark as that between a Republican and a Democrat. There are Hy-Vee girls – those who favor the employee-owned grocer. And then there are Dahl’s girls, those who shop at the Hy-Vee’s smaller competitor.

But it is next to the Harding Hills Hy-Vee where the Polk County Auditor has seen fit to locate an early voting station, smack in the middle of a heavily Democratic neighborhood.

Obama’s Iowa campaign sees the polling place as a prime opportunity to build on their already-impressive lead in Iowa early voting. The numbers are small – over twenty votes in a day is considered a good turnout – but every vote counts.

The Harding Hills Hy-Vee, Des Moines, Iowa

Cora Egherman and I head for Harding Hills to do “visibility” – to stand 300 feet distant from the polling place and demonstrate as loudly and noticeably as possible in support of Barack Obama in an attempt to boost turnout.

We are armed with sidewalk chalk, signs, t-shirts, and our voices. “Register and vote, right here, right now,” I repeat at  passing drivers as they head up the ramp to the Hy-Vee. Many are surprised to learn they can vote without being registered already.

Cora, hoisting a “Honk 4 Obama” sign, gets good responses from the cars on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Parkway. I’m waving a sign advertising that early voting is here, now.

Many we speak with have already voted, they tell us. We thank them as they drive off and beg for honks. We arrived shortly after 5 p.m. and we’ll be staying until close to 7 p.m., when the polls close. Cora and I laugh whenever we get an odd look from a passing driver. We figure they must be Republicans.

Cora Egherman and the Honk 4 Obama sign

The headquarters staff  has pressed for more  demonstrating at Harding Hills. At the beginning of the early voting period, they drove past the Hy-Vee several times a day and complained whenever they couldn’t see a Democrat beating the drum for early voting.

Your correspondent hectoring passing vehicles

The field staff keeps a shared Google spreadsheet with a list of Harding Hills volunteers for every hour the polls are open. With their energy and enthusiasm, the campaign kids are a natural fit for the job but it’s hard to track down parental permission.

With two weeks to go until Election Day, the 2012 U.S. presidency will likely hinge on Ohio, though Iowa, New Hampshire, Virginia, Nevada, and Colorado remain undecided battlegrounds as well.

With Mitt Romney having consolidated his gains after a long, expensive campaign in Florida, it looks more and more likely that he will defeat Barack Obama there. That leaves the 18 electoral votes of Ohio as the biggest remaining prize of the election. It isn’t impossible for either candidate to win without Ohio, but it would take nearly a sweep of every remaining competitive state.

Obama’s easiest path to victory is the Mid-Western route: win in Ohio, maintain his slim lead in Wisconsin, and add any other state (Iowa comes to mind!) He could also pair Virginia and any other small state with Ohio for the win, though Virginia is far from a sure thing.

Romney would need to wrest Ohio away from Obama – the president holds a minuscule lead there – win the coin toss of Virginia, and add another small state for the victory.

But even without Ohio, Obama could conceivably take the election just by winning Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado and Nevada. Virginia’s 13 electoral votes would just be gravy under that scenario.

The hope here in Iowa is that a strong ground game and emphasis on early voting will tip the state in Obama’s favor. This is a competition in the margins and small advantages are magnified.