FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida -- The vans came at 10 Sunday morning to take us to the America Coming Together (ACT) office, several miles inland from the pretty beach on which we are staying in a motel that does not appear to have changed since the '50s (which may have been when the beds were bought and the curtains last cleaned).
The ACT offices are located at the back, and unlovely, end of a shopping mall, somewhere in a vast sea of shopping malls, many boarded up, that seems to form the heart of greater Fort Lauderdale, at least that small part of it that I've seen. We gather in a large, windowless room for our briefing. More vanloads filter in until our entire New York contingent had arrived, all 90 or so of us, the friends and friends of friends of five new-media types in New York who've decided at the last minute that they should do something to help John Kerry win, and who thus organized this trip down to Broward County to help get out the vote.
When we are all assembled, Alison G., also from New York, who has been here only a couple of weeks but is now a coordinator (promotions occur fast in the ground war), briefs us on the situation: There have been more than a 100,000 Democrats registered since 2000 in Broward County, the most Democratic county in Florida, where Al Gore won 67 percent of the vote. Our main objective is to get those newly registered voters to vote. If Kerry wins Broward big, he wins Florida, and if he wins Florida, he wins. Kerry can win without Florida, but George W. Bush can't, so the stakes are high.
ACT's goal is to knock on every potential voter's door three times. This is the essence of the ACT approach; repeated personal contact has been shown to be the most effective means of getting out the vote. It beats phone calls, mailings, and TV ads. The personal touch is what works, and that's what we're here to provide.
And the challenge is huge, because the other side is well-organized and because the voting machinery in Florida would be compared by no one to a Swiss watch. On the day early voting began in Broward, nine of 14 early-voting sites weren't working. And we have all read about the 58,000 missing absentee ballots from Broward that were lost in transit. The point that the Republicans don't want a high turnout is repeatedly driven home.
We are given instructions on how to vote early, what to do if people haven't received absentee ballots, and what to do if they have and haven't yet mailed them. We're told not to wear Kerry-Edwards pins, and to beware of dogs. “Florida is the guard-dog capital of the world,” we're told.
Then we break up into teams, and it's into the vans again. Cathy and Olivera, my team leaders, drive us out to a neighborhood that goes by the name of “14D” on our map, and we're let off with lists of registered Democrats and door-knockers to hang when no one's home, and off we go, in pairs.
14D appears to be a neighborhood on the cusp between lower and middle class, though whether moving up or down I can't tell. No sidewalks, generally well-maintained lawns, some houses that look to have been hastily constructed from concrete blocks, but many other quite attractive ranch houses. And lots of cars. We discover that no one down here seems to have fewer than two cars, and many households have four or five. Nice cars, too; no old wrecks on cinder blocks but lots of late model American and Japanese vehicles, even the occasional BMW, and a single Hummer, parked in front of a house that looks as though it cost less than the vehicle. In general, the cars seem to belong to a higher economic strata than the houses, a phenomenon we are unable to explain.
Mac, a dancer and Pilates instructor from Manhattan with whom I shared a couple of drinks and three hours of shared life stories on the flight down, and I head off down the street to start knocking on doors and winning the election for our side. Eyes peeled for guard dogs and hostile Republicans, we orient ourselves and approach the first house. No one home. We leave a door-knocker and move on.
Most people on our route, it turns out, are not home. It's Sunday, and early afternoon, so that's not surprising, but it is a little dismaying. I had visions of Socratic dialogues about leadership and democracy with my southern fellow Americans, but there isn't much of that. Occasionally we find people at home, and in a surprising number of cases they tell us they've already voted. Mac and I debate whether they're just trying to get rid of us or have indeed actually voted. Mac leans to the latter; I'm more skeptical. Mostly the people we meet are friendly and happy to see us, politely taking our door-knocker with its list of early-voting addresses and wishing us well.
Once we hear from the back of a living room, in the darkness near the glow of a television, a man's voice shout out, “We're votin' for Bush!” But the woman we've actually come to see scurries to the door and assures us she will be doing no such thing. A strong Kerry supporter, she takes our flier and thanks us, then tells us that hers is a happy relationship, which we're glad to hear.
Despite the occasional distant bark, we encounter no enraged Dobermans. At one house the doorbell provokes a frantic chorus of yapping, and half a dozen tiny furballs leap from under the curtains and try to break through the plate glass to get at us. But as none of them is larger than a slipper, and the glass holds, we escape without injury. An interesting approach to security, I think: Not one big fearsome dog but a whole pack of really annoying miniatures.
Only one woman we encounter says quietly that she has no intention of voting. Yes, she's registered; she just doesn't want to vote. Here is our first real challenge, and we attempt to rise to it. We try to impress upon her the importance of this election (“the most important of our lifetimes,” we intone, as if freshly minting the phrase), but it's no good. She doesn't want our door-knocker and she doesn't want to vote. She closes the door quietly but firmly in our faces.
On the way back to the ACT offices, where the big treat of the day is to be an appearance by Michael Moore -- it would not be an exaggeration to describe Cathy and Olivera as being giddy as schoolgirls at the prospect of meeting their hero -- we debrief. A couple of people feel that they've made a difference, that at least a few of those that they talked to will now vote because of their visits. Others of us -- me sadly included -- are less confident.
It seems to all of us a very inefficient way to operate, but we realize we're cannon fodder. We cost nothing, and the thousands of us all over the country hurled at unsuspecting voters are not expected to bring in a high percentage of votes for Kerry. A few here and there will do. That John F. Kennedy won by a single vote per precinct is much mentioned, and the magic number “537,” the measure of our despair last time around, is intoned like a prayer. Every vote counts, every vote counts, every vote counts.
On the way back to the tacky hotel, Michael Moore having canceled, feeling a little unfulfilled and wondering if it was worth flying all the way down here, we pass the Broward County Southern Regional Courthouse, where a large crowd is gathered on the steps and lawn. We park and investigate. The lawn is studded with little posters, some handmade: “Vote No on 3,” “Vote Yes on 3,” “Firefighters for Kerry-Edwards.”
Though it's now after 6 p.m. and the polls closed at 4, there are still hundreds of people waiting to vote in the dark (if you were in line at 4 you get to vote). I talk to Fitzroy and Angela Brown, both originally from Jamaica, Fitzroy voting in his second election, Angela in her first. They arrived at 3, having already tried at another polling place where the line was half a mile long. Here it was merely around the block, so they waited. They got their number, 780, waited awhile, then went home, came back, went home and had dinner, and were back again waiting their turn. They were up to 713 when we arrived, and the count went on, slowly making its way up to the Browns. (I didn't find out what the highest number was, but it was well over 1,000.) They waited patiently with the hundreds of others, undeterred by the delay, by the steamy heat earlier and the intermittent rain now. I was so moved by their patience and determination, I almost felt it rude to ask, but I did.
“Oh, we're voting for Mr, Kerry, no doubt about it,” Fitzroy said with a big smile.
The Browns, new citizens, believe that every vote counts, and I can do no less. I will dedicate my efforts Monday and Tuesday to them.
Alan Wade is a writer and filmmaker living in New York City.
