Ride Board: Cal Bears Beat Bush Round III - Archived Entry

I just got back from Reno, on the night of October 16. I had a great time. All the voters I talked to were polite and receptive. I had a couple of particularly nice conversations in Spanish and espanglés. One was with a noncitizen who somehow got on our rolls; she can't wait till she completed two more years of residence and gets to apply for citizenship. I expressed my sympathies and my high hopes and dutifully marked her as a non-citizen. The other was with a wife of a citizen, who seemed totally thrilled that we were soliciting his participation.

Not only did I meet lots of awesome people from the Berkeley Driving Votes chapter, with whom I car-pooled; I also met several Kerry-Edwards volunteers walking my same neighborhood. Due to McCain-Feingold, we weren't allowed to compare our lists, but one thing seemed certain: If people in this neighborhood ever doubted that their votes matter, they should know it now. :)

ACT was wonderful. I was impressed with their degree of organization. They provided boxed lunches (veggie and non-), then gave us detailed maps of our precincts--one list of addresses per worker. In earlier field work, people had already identified likely progressive voters; our task was just to contact them and encourage them to do Early Vote.

Best of all, ACT put us up at a local motel. Breakfast and dinner were my only expenses for the trip.
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Quinn Weaver, Berkeley, CA