Having been with the Obama volunteer team since almost the start I have been amazed by what I call "doing everything right" from the start. The most tangible evidence has been the enormous success the Obama campaign has had on registrating new voters in every battleground state, often going back to the primary/caucus days. Huffington Post has a great article today that captures much of how and why this political experience has been wholly different and successful.

Inside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing,
an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive
movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in
a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.

The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many
netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade.
Other recent attempts have failed because they were either so
"top-down" and/or poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership
and enthusiasm; or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure
peer-to-peer or "bottom-up" organizing that they rejected basic
management, accountability and planning. The architects and builders of
the Obama field campaign, on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed
timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new
technologies of decentralization and self-organization.

But all that has been in preparation for the final push, also known as GOTV (GET OUT THE VOTE) where I assure you have never seen such a coordinated, massive effort by its decentralized, self-organization on the neighborhood level with the deployment and motivated streamlined organization at the field management level. My experience from earlier campaigns was that a central body, usually at the county level would attempt to loosely coordinate Unions, local party officials and small teams of campaign volunteers into trying to sweep up a small percentage of voters.

The Obama team has other plans. First in states like Colorado or Wisconsin where early voting, (known as Mail-In or Absentee balloting) they focused on making voter contacts where they are both persuading the undecided's, closing the leaners and openly registrating mail in ballot applications for their identified supporters. In Colorado they are seeking to get 75% of their identified support to mail in and/or early vote before the final weekend. It is well known that Mail In balloters vote at higher turnouts than day of the election voters to a degree often in the high 80's to 90%.

This is where the investment into technology comes into play where the Obama team is partnered with the Democratic Party in their nationwide voter database. This tool will allow Obama campaign organizers and volunteer leaders to get daily updates of who has a Mail In Ballot, where then they can focus on GOTV efforts on those who haven't turned in their ballot yet. By the final weekend the organization will know who is left to vote at the polls and then concentrate their entire human resources on contacting those voters and getting them to the polls on Tuesday. Furthermore, they can seek to recruit more volunteers to work on the final weekend if they have voted already.

The final day instead of one county-wide office with a skeleton crew of loosely associated groups haphazardly doing GOTV activities the Obama team will have staging centers all over their field organizations working in their neighborhood areas that they have already worked the last two months in campaign activities. That weekend they will deploy the largest teams of canvassers and phone bankers attempting to reach every remaining voter on their contact list. As the election day unfolds each precinct will have a poll watcher who will report back on an hourly basis who has voted while contact teams will fan out and find those remaining votes.

Then teams who have had great success will be redeployed to problem areas in the final hours making the mad dash to the finish line. At each poll they will also have watchers identfying inappropriate activities like systematic voter challenges and machine issues and other suppression activities. Teams of lawyers will be in place to immediately act on nefarious and questionable activities. The plan holds that if a large majority of voters have already voted with a paper trail (mail in ballot) they can ably respond to the issues in smaller numbers.

This plan is being deployed in each battleground state with local knowledge and where local issues will make adjustments. But the bottom line is that right now the Obama teams are identifying human resources, securing time and facilities and organizing while the campaign is in full swing. It is a dream come true for a political science junkie who has been waiting for the someone to come along and unleash the power of a democracy. The only way the CWC (conservatives without conscience) can success is at the margins, the cannot stem the tidal wave of a voting tsunami of interested and motivated mass voters.

Couple this with the reports that Obama is securing a half hour of prime time on the national networks Wednesday October 29th the final Wednesday using what is rumored to be a outragious record haul of contributions in September this could be the change election we have been waiting for.

Final note: A truly angry white man who happened to be my college roommate, a genuine kool aide drinking Republican Reptile, told me today the market crash is because everyone fears an Obama Administration. Right.....what they fear is losing another 5% before they can sell out.