Philadelphia VII - get out the vote!

Checking door knockers was pretty boring, but after we were redeployed to a more southern area office we were sent out to knock on doors and to remind people to vote.

I was lucky enough to be paired with a wonderful woman who lived in the area, knew her way around and clearly felt at ease there. And we were lucky enough to be working in areas which were nearly 100% black, so we never had to ask if someone was considering voting for Obama. In fact, quite a few people took great pleasure in pretending, momentarily, to have voted for McCain.

The areas we were in were pretty poor, including a set of streets called "the box" which is notorious for having the most drug dealers anywhere in Philadelphia, and some others where my canvassing partner had seen a teenager firing a gun the previous week. Many houses were boarded up, and many others which looked uninhabitable contained families (in the lower photo of the street you can see a man opening the door of a house that looks completely boarded up).

We knocked on hundreds of doors in the course of the day, and struggled to find a single person who had not already voted. Almost everyone said they had voted before work, at 7 or 8am. Some people had family members who had been unable to sleep, and had arrived at the polling station at 6 (they didn't open for voting until 7) just to make sure they would get a chance to vote. Someone who had arrived at 7 was the 160th person to vote at his station. Unlike in other parts of this city, and the country, there were hardly any queues after this initial rush, and no one reported being turned away or unable to vote for any reason.

But there was a festive atmosphere around the polling stations, even without queues. One had been set up in a small flower shop (see photo), another in a funeral home. Outside another, in a local park, a man had set up an amplifier and was playing covers by Dave Matthews Band, with a small Obama sign. Other people around him were sitting on park benches or standing around, often with their children, holding Obama signs, while others gave out coffee and pretzels to voters as they arrived (the 36th ward office had a huge supply of pretzels for people who had to wait in line, but since no one in our area did they were distributed relatively freely).

By 6pm we were mainly just telling everyone to have a great night and enjoy the celebrations, as people started to come out into the streets, to greet everyone they saw with "have you voted?" and drive around honking. People also started to tell us to be careful and stay safe, and since everyone seemed to have voted we left happy (and exhausted from all that walking!).