Call YOUR FRIENDS for Change: Updated (I have a website)

I think it's great that both Kos and Chris Bowers continue to push the importance of getting active in phonebanking to help get this majority in November. I thought this was an opportune moment, then, to reiterate my post from a few days ago about TARGETED phonebanking by calling every single person in your cell phone address book.

You have to be polite when you call strangers, but you can yell and scream at your friends and family and say, "Dammit, get your ass to the polls!" We all know the arguments we can use to get our friends out to vote. We need to take ownership. I guarantee you the other side encourages this. We need to do it, AND make it systematic.

So, like a good member of the netroots, I built a quickie website.

Cell Phones for Democracy explains the details of the project to reach as many people as humanly possible with TARGETED, KNOWLEDGEABLE, FRIEND AND FAMILY CALLS between now and November 7.

While I've become convinced that there's a great value in reminding voters of the need to vote, I still think they get inundated with robocalls and DNC calls and state party calls and statewide candidate calls and individual district candidate calls and city council candidate calls that there becomes a certain law of diminishing returns.

This is not at all true when you're calling the family and friends who are in your cell phone. You know them, you know how to talk to them, you can cajole and persuade and yell at them to get to the polls. And the message will be received more strongly. Word of mouth is the greatest form of advertising you can deliver. While people will tune out many of the traditional phonebanking calls, when it comes from a friend or family member it has more weight.

So that's it. You go right down the list in your address book, from A to Z, and ask your friends and family to vote, make sure that they're registered, tell them how to get an absentee ballot if needed, tell them how to find out where their polling place is, and if they have a higher level of engagement, tell them how to volunteer, or tell them to do this cell phone calling project themselves. This will end up in a huge amount of registered voters being called. There are 85 numbers in my cell phone. If I don't want to call someone in there for whatever reason, they ought not be in the address book in the first place.

Here's what I need you to do. I need you to make an appointment to do this. In the comments section of Cell Phones For Democracy you need to pledge to call everybody in your cell phone. You should also put approximately how many people that is. I want to track the numbers. I want to be able to say, on November 7, that I helped get ONE MILLION personal phone calls to voters. It's completely possible. This has the potential to be exponential.

The site launched two hours ago. I'll be updating it with the numbers as they roll in. Let's make it huge. I'm not asking, I'm telling with this. Get to your phones! Now!