I took a vacation day today. After seeing the President on Sunday, I really wanted to do something to help (besides tossing my MasterCard into the campaign pot every few days).
I've done a little phone calling with the Dashboard the last couple of weeks - not as much as I wanted to, because sometimes I don't get home early enough - it closes at 9:30 every night so we don't annoy people too much.
So today, I drove over to the local phone banking place and did 240 calls between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm - only got to speak to about 50 people in real time, but left well over 120 messages and made notes about the wrong numbers / disconnects so the lists can be updated for our Florida mid-terms (and getting rid of Voldemort election) in 2014.
Having been on the receiving end of hundreds of hang ups the last couple of weeks, I tried to leave a nice reminder message for every machine I talked to, so at least it wasn't an annoying hang up thing.
I had some good talks and some bad talks... a little more beyond the orange cotton ball...
To the man who answered his phone while he was apparently up on a high ladder repairing something - I'm sorry, I had no idea you were doing that and I hope you DO go vote and stop thinking the reminder was annoying. But why the hell would anybody dangling off a ladder 20 feet in the air answer their phone if they don't recognize the number? I hope you finished whatever you were doing without mishap and went to vote.
To the 19 year old girl who is upset she can't vote because she works 9-9 every day, except Sunday (with a 90 minute commute each way) and had no idea that Florida only had one early voting Sunday, so she missed it - I'm sorry that somehow you didn't get the news or Facebook or Tweets or anything else that's been being blasted all over TV, radio and social media the last 4 weeks. I don't know what your job is and I know this would have been your first election, but I don't know how anybody living in Florida could have missed any of this unless they never, ever, ever turn on the TV, or the radio, surf the net, go on Facebook, Tweet, read a magazine or a newspaper, or overhear anybody talking about the election anywhere in public. I wish your number had come up on my Dashboard 2 weeks ago, so I could tell you, you're only going to one chance to vote early if your work schedule is that crazy (and I have the same 90 minute commute and generally leave the house at 7:00 am and leave the office at 6:30 pm, so I DO understand that part).
To the lady who cheerfully said "It's TODAY? TODAY is Election Day?" and then burst out laughing at my astonished sputtering and reassured me that she had just come back from voting and she was picking up her "usually non-voting husband" from work for lunch and DRAGGING him to the polls and waiting with him in the line AGAIN to make sure he voted for President Obama (and then expressing concern over our "ridiculous" voting problems in South Florida and hoping we can all work together to come up with something to fix it). Thank you - you made my day!
To the attorney who answered his phone with "this is attorney [John Doe]" are you having voting problems?" who patiently listened to my reminder recital and assured me that he was voting this afternoon, yes, he knew to stay in line no matter what and said he was doing his best to help others protect their votes - thank you, for your patience, for not making me feel like an idiot and for doing your part to help the President and voters in Broward County.
To all the people I left messages for - please don't be annoyed. Whether it was your 5th or 50th call - nobody will call you any more after today, so please try to be forgiving. I hope you were out voting when I got your voice mail. I hope you were voting to re-elect our President.