The heat is on

This morning we set out bright and early to the house of regional campaign organisers Don & Roz, to receive our instructions. After a quick pep talk from Bill, our 'boss' for the day, we set off in the car with a list of voters in hand. These were all people who had been spoken to before and who had been recorded as saying they intended to vote Democratic.

Our job was to introduce ourselves as calling on behalf of the Florida Democrats and verify whether they intended to vote for Obama. If the answer was yes, then we would ask if they knew about early voting. This is something that is very different from the UK, where we have postal and proxy voting but no other options. Here in Florida the polls have been open since Monday (20 October) and they're open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm! As we've been pointing out, this is a great way to avoid the long 'lines' (queue times can be hours) on polling day itself, and avoid the problems that happened in 2000 and 2004, making sure that you get to vote and that your vote is counted.

We quickly realised that door-knocking is a far more arduous task here in Florida than it usually is in the UK. For a start, there's the distance: houses are larger and further apart, and we had to drive from street to street, to find the little pockets of voters we needed to speak to. Then there's the temperature. By the time we broke for lunch it had reached 82 Fahrenheit, and I'd covered myself liberally with Factor 25. It was hard work but very rewarding. However, it only got tougher as the day went on and by the time we got back to our hotel at around 6.30pm, we were both exhausted.

We found that speaking to American voters is much the same as speaking to British voters. Once they got over the shock of a random English guy knocking on their door on a Saturday afternoon, we generally met with a polite reception, in some cases positively rapturous - especially at one house, where they gleefully accepted four Obama-Biden bumper stickers from us. In fact, the first door we knocked on, we were invited in!

We didn't quite manage to knock on every door on the three lists Bill gave us, but we'll be back out there tomorrow to finish the job and start afresh with a whole new set of streets and voters.

After a hard day's work, we headed to Riverview for a 'Get Out The Vote Rally'. We had a really good time, and will put up a post about it tomorrow. But now, bed and hopefully a decent night's sleep are calling! Watch this space...............................