After the incredible experience of traveling to Reno on the October 1st trip, we knew that we had to find a way back. Richard, our go to guy from Driving Votes, had been actively attempting to persuade us to skip our hometown football game (an unthinkable action in Piedmont) but the outlook seemed dim. Finally we got the word that Meera, our saving grace at this point, was departing on Saturday before the break of dawn.

Our group of four (Meera, Vivian, Julia, and I) was relatively enthusiastic for the bizarre hour; I attribute this to the exciting prospect of actually turning Nevada blue. After several semi conscious hours, and a pit stop for Doritos, we found ourselves amongst three hundred other volunteers just as pumped for the day ahead. I was identified as a capable young person and assigned to use Palm Pilots with team nine (GO JETS!) We initially terrified our leader Scott, but by the end of the day I think he was broken. Describing the trip to friends later felt like going over a weeks worth of activities, so much was packed into the ten or so hours in Reno that it does not seem possible. Inspired by the speeches of James and the national director ACT, coupled with the thrill of appearing on Nevada news, I entered the sublets of Reno with one thing on my mind, Get out the Vote! My fellow teammate Ricker was a phone call away, ready to bring the van to whomever wanted a ride. People showed us a great deal of support, and not once did we run into apathy.

Driving votes did an incredible job organizing and providing for the volunteers of this trip. Not only did I feel proud of the work that was getting done, I enjoyed being a part of such an inspiring and motivated group. While winning back Nevada for the Democrats, doing my part to further door to door campaigning, and remaining updated on the efforts various groups are putting in to this election are the main reasons I opted to go to Reno, the fun I had is motivation enough to do it again.

--Paula Klein, Piedmont, CA

I had not met this spirited young women who was doing her part for restoring democracy. We picked up 2 very cheery teen age gals. They were amazingly excited for such an early hour. Meera is very serious and quite intelligent with a beautiful smile mixed with a lot of confidence.

I have always been an activist and have worked for many issues both environmental and helping elect local council members in my town of Hayward. I attended all the S.F peace rallies and had our own candle light vigil in my home town.

I grew up in the Bay area and have always had my hands in progressive politics. I am a member of the Green party, yet I believe this election needs my help in order to sway the voters away from Bush.

I met up that morning after a very smokey ride through the burning forest. What a metaphor for where our world is right now, certainly we are on fire. Soon we hit the headquarters for ACT and other organizations. I was very impressed with the organization of the leaders as well the coordinated efforts of giving everyone something to do. We had a great team of folks, I was on team A with the wild teen girls. I used a Palm pilot for the first time and we hit the streets. Our leader was very easy going yet helpful. One of our guys just quit his job and spoke of the future. Another women provided lots of humor and up energy. Did I make a difference, well, I had the best conversation with a young voter in the future, she said to me (she is 12 by the way) 'what is your take on Kerry?' She agreed to get her mom to rent Michael Moore's 911 and will vote on Nickelodeon (Sp). Which by the way I heard the votes are in from the kids and guess who won...yes it was Kerry. They say for the past 2 or 3 elections the kids have chosen the president. see you in Vegas or it is back to Reno for Halloween?

Sincerely a big thank you to everyone.
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Viviane June DeLeon Bias, Hayward, CA

Though a bit timid initially (as this is the first time I had ever done something like this), the very first door I knocked upon erased any worries I had for the day. My now good chum Darlene answered the door to the yapping of her wiener dog, whom she swore would not bite me. After being introduced to her roommate Mabel, I explained to them the purpose of Driving Votes. Darlene was quite excited by the notion that we would drive her to the polling station and requested we pick them up on election day, as I believe they see what many take for granted as a special outing. When leaving I was asked whether I wanted her small dog to accompany me on my quest to wrangle up some democratic voters, alas I declined and trudged on down Desert Peach Drive.

Despite the fact that I was mostly unsuccessful to persuade anyone to vote that first day, I feel my trip to Sparks (a suburb of Reno) was well worth the 6 hour round trip. Though I regret being out of town for Cal's homecoming victory over UCLA, I can now say that I was chased out of a cul 'de sac by a seven-year-old girl sporting vampire fangs; one more thing off my list to do before I die. From the long drives filled with discussions on bush's domestic doublespeak (clean sky's initiative, no child left behind, etc.), to kicking back with a Sparks man while he drank a Corona and told me of his plans for the future, the trip was a lot of fun.
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Travis Johnston, Berkeley, CA

I had to overcome my usual shyness to do this, and I have to admit I grew quite nervous as the day neared. But as you can see above and below, I am glad I did it. I realized that even if you consider yourself to be shy, helping out in this stage of the game is easier than you might think.

I encourage everyone who lives in or near a swing state to get over any apprehension you might have, or excuses about lack of time, and help to Get Out The Vote. I read many posts from people on Daily Kos to "GOTV PEOPLE!", but if you are like me, there is a hump of nervousness and "fear of the unknown" that you have to get over first. I'm hoping that this diary (if anyone actually reads it) will provide the low-level details that I was hungry for, and in doing so help those people get over this hump and actually go and help out!

I've written a lot of information below, but for those who are not that interested in knowing all of the details, but still need some convincing on how easy/important it is to get out the vote, here is some basic info:
• In Nevada (and I'm guessing other states), people can vote early at an early voting polling station.
• The biggest goal right now is to get people to vote early to (a) "bank" the vote and (b) to use the resources of the GOTV effort on an ever dwindling population of voters. (Once a person votes, there is no reason to spend GOTV effort on them.)
• GOTV canvassing is easy even if you are shy. You are mostly visiting people who have already been found to be Kerry supporters, so there isn't much in the way of confrontation.
• Volunteer even if you can't convince any friends to join you. This was the situation I was in, and I was worried that I would just stand around not knowing anyone. But the volunteers are all excited about the cause, and are quite friendly to each other.

All in all, I probably spoke to about thirty or so people. That may seem like a small number, but remember, these are people that ACT has identified as leaning Kerry but not necessarily gung-ho voters. If every volunteer that was there on Saturday met with that many people, there were literally thousands of leaning voters contacted, people who may not have voted otherwise.

I was worried that voters would be offended by people from out-of-state telling them how to vote. The issue simply did not come up--no one asked where I was from. I volunteered I was from the Bay Area to a few people who were obviously supporters, and they were actually quite happy I was in Reno helping out.
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Joey Rozier

Read Joey's entire blog at: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/17/134253/79

We pulled into Reno at 8:30 and met up with the others who had the luck of leaving Friday night and staying at a hotel that I heard served them great breakfast. Grrr…

HOWEVER – once I got in my precinct I did not care at all. I was completely overwhelmed by the people I talked to this time around. Last time in Reno, I got excited because someone offered me her raincoat when it started raining; this time I got excited because *everyone* I talked to said they were going to either 1) vote early or 2) vote absentee now. I realized that if Reno was so enthusiastic to elect Kerry, Las Vegas must be uber-enthusiastic. And if both Reno and Las Vegas are in on Kerry… hell yeah Nevada is going Blue! The rudest response I got the entire day was a woman saying “I just got out of the shower! I’m voting Monday morning – go Kerry… now don’t come back!”

All the volunteers that canvassed in Reno before – I thank you so much for doing what you did. ACT’s walk sheets this time around were terrific – only one person had moved and all the information was correct – no non-addresses and no accidental Bush-supporters. The walk sheets were great because on the past few trips we filtered out all the wrong houses to make sure no time would be wasted during GOTV. I’m glad to say all that time we put in during the past few months paid off on Saturday.

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Meera Garud, Berkeley, CA

See Meera's Driving Votes' blog here: http://www.drivingvotes.org/blogs/meera/

It was awesome... The vast majority of people on my canvassing sheets were home. 95% of them were strong Kerry supporters and were definitely planning on voting. A good number of people were not aware of early voting and after talking to them about it, especially in light of some shady Republican registration activities, thought that they would try this early voting thing. My group actually took 5 people to the polls to vote on Saturday.

I've written in some evaluations that ACT needed to have something a little more substantial than Krispy Kreme donuts in the morning and not waste so much time coming back to debrief and have lunch at noon. Couldn't have been more different on Saturday. Tons of Bagels, OJ, water... the box lunches for us to take into the field and eat there were great....

A very positive day, tons of 1st time voters who were planning on voting, made new friends, ran into other groups who were canvassing as well, MoveOn, Nevada Democrats, etc... ACT's canvassing sheets were very, very good. Looks like they have weeded out a ton of bad names and addresses.... talked to some immigrants who were so excited to vote in this coming election.... "We watch Debates, Kerry win easily, we vote for him" A woman stuck in a minimum wage job who was thinking of voting for Bush, reminded her that Kerry wants to raise the min wage and Bush doesn't, she changed her mind on the spot..... A great day...

I'll be back in Reno on Saturday with my wife, 4yr old daughter, 2-yr-old son and my inlaws... I'll be hitting the pavement but maybe they can make phone calls....
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George Curry, Fairfield, CA

See George’s Driving Votes' blog here: http://www.drivingvotes.org/blogs/george/

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