Phone banking to victory!

The rain was pounding. I was lost. The signs were barely visible. I thought of turning back. But, I knew that the election was ours to win and my minor detail of being lost in the storm was not enough of a reason to go home. I drove around for at least 30 minutes until I found the Obama office Monday night.

Monday night and all day Tuesday, the office was full of people of different ages and races calling to make a change in the US. Immigrants, native born citizens, students, and retirees — we called thousands of voters. Around the country, I bet the Obama volunteers called at least a million voters to remind them to get to the polls.

On Tuesday, I took the day off and went to my local Obama campaign office in San Jose and called voters in the battleground states of Indiana, Pennsylvania and Missouri. Some of those voters were upset as they had been inundated with phone calls for days. But some people, especially senior women, were super excited to vote early for him and told me about going at 6:30am to wait 30 minutes for the polls to open. It was invigorating to hear their happy voices, knowing that they are a major part of history in the making.

I observed two elections in Ukraine after the famous Orange Revolution of 2005, when Victor Yushenko and Yuliya Timoshenko got worldwide attention for his victory over his corrupt opponent who rigged the elections. It was saddening to see the excitement of the people erode as their champions of democracy continued fighting with each other. (The President currently wants to dissolve the Parliament for the second time since he got elected less than four years ago and call new elections again.)

Though the press was no longer censored, the economy eroded and people didn’t see the promises of the Orange Revolution realized. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1102303.stm. Despite this negativity, I was inspired by the women who organized and managed the polling stations. For very little pay and little gratitude, they worked 24 hour shifts at the polling stations in unheated buildings because they believed in the importance of their country having a democracy.

I felt that same sense of civic duty at the Obama office. I sincerely hope that our political process doesn’t descend into a mess like in Ukraine.