Ground Game Update

Sean at Five Thirty Eight has started his road reports with a couple on Nevada and they're really interesting. Seeing that my efforts with the Obama campaign thus far have focused on Nevada, it's great to see a report from the ground. The area around Carson City is experiencing a Democratic resurgence, and there are targeted voter registration efforts there. And I'm liking what I'm hearing about Reno:

During the summer, John McCain’s Reno office was struggling to attract volunteers. After he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate, there was a line of volunteers waiting outside the campaign office the following morning. Since then, they’ve gotten a solid 20 volunteers a night, though only four were there the night I stopped into the office. I was willing to believe the 20 figure, given the re-energized party since Palin entered the race.

By contrast, Barack Obama’s Reno office has been humming for months. Though John Kerry won the city of Reno in 2004, he lost neighboring Sparks and Washoe County as a whole by 4.21%, or 6,704 votes. That represents just over 31% of his total losing margin (21,500), despite the fact that Washoe contributes only about 19% of Nevada’s statewide voting total.

In just the last year, Washoe County’s R-D voter registration gap has dropped from R +16,000 to R +5,000. The several months on the ground leading up to the January 19 caucus helped. That shift represents a lot of grinding, day-by-day work by organizers and volunteers to canvass and recanvass neighborhoods that can't be crammed at the last minute.

Good stuff. Of course, the McCain ground game is starting to roll as well. They're preparing for problems at the polling places, you see. I don't know if that word should read "preparing" or "creating," but they're certainly on top of it. They even want to pick the judges who will make key voting decisions on Election Day.

McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers said there were a number of issues that required advance legwork, including the proper handling of absentee ballots by military personnel deployed overseas.

Another issue is the last-minute decisions for polling places to stay open later. Rogers said the committee will work with precincts to determine under which circumstances an extension should be granted as well as agree upon a judge to handle such claims.

“You could pre-approve some judges,” Rogers said, “so they’re not going to somebody who’s in somebody’s pocket.”

How helpful!

Obama's campaign is not having any of this. They are jumping all over any indications of voter suppression or disenfranchisement. Today, they announced an initiative to combat the potential for suppression in Michigan using foreclosure records.

The Obama Campaign and the Democratic National Committee are joining with three Michigan residents in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to defend the lawful right of families facing foreclosure or who have lost their homes to vote in the November election.

"Senator McCain said last week that he was 'divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have,' and he certainly has proven that to Michigan families," said Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe. "Senator McCain has no real plan to turn Michigan's economy around or help families faced with losing their homes - so his party has decided the only way to save his campaign is to deny the right to vote to families most affected by his disastrous economic policies."

The complaint filed today seeks declaratory and injunctive relief to challenge the "lose your home, lose your vote" vote-suppression program adopted by the Macomb County Republican Party, in concert with the Michigan Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, as well as unnamed Defendants who will implement the scheme at polling places in Macomb County and throughout the State. This "lose your home, lose your vote" program is part of a broader scheme - misnamed an "election integrity" program - to harass voters and suppress the vote throughout the State of Michigan in the upcoming election on November 4.

You can read the complaint here, and at the above link see a long rundown of the GOP's voter suppression history. Obama has actually worked on this issue in the United States Senate, so I think they'll be more than ready for the challenge. Still, the GOP knows this field well and will have all kinds of new maneuvers, I'm sure.