Tuesday, November 04, 2008

It's all over but the counting (almost)

Just some random election rambling...

First, a word on exit polls. NRO posted about an item from Virginia Virtucon that said exit pollsters were sampling minorities in the Falmouth district of Stafford County, VA at a ratio of 4:1 over non-minorities. I live not far from there, and rest assured, that's a way lopsided sampling. Probably an inversion of the demographic there. So...DON'T BELIEVE THE EXIT POLLS.

Second, a word about the local GOP organization here. They're great people, but they're not, in my humble opinion, making the best use of their volunteers' time. I cleared my calendar this afternoon to bail early from work and see what I could do to help. Got to the office at around 3PM to see if they had any voters needing rides to the polls. Nope...they had volunteers to drive, but no voters to drive to the polls. I think they've got no mechanism to identify voters needing assistance, and therefore had no way of knowing if any friendly voters needed rides.

Here's how it's done:
I shouldn't have to go to a regional office eight miles from my house. Each county is divided into voting districts/precincts. I should be able to get hold of precinct party captains who've got lists of registered voters in their precinct and there should be a precinct-level GOTV effort in the final days leading up to the election and on election day to call those voters and compile a list of people needing rides. Within a precinct, they're all going to the same place to vote, so it's pretty easy.

Note to field-level party wonks: phone-banking on election day is a waste of time and volunteer resources!

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