Originally posted by Katie Hanson

Today we have been doing more traditional style door-to-door canvassing, delivering “trick or vote” goodie bags with GOTV literature and a Will and Grace CD. I went round some student accommodation attached to the medical school and had a generally very good reception. It’s unseasonably warm for the time of year here, which is good news for us if it holds until Tuesday. Good weather helps turnout, which is good for the Democrats.

What isn’t clear from the polls published in the media is that they don’t take account of people who didn’t vote last time, meaning that first time voters are excluded, along with people who abstained in 2000. Also, pollsters can’t call cellphone (mobile) numbers, so people without a land line are also excluded. All this means that things are probably much closer than the polls suggest, and there really is everything to play for on Tuesday.

We had a “honk for Kerry” session at a busy intersection during the rush hour yesterday evening, and the (very) small number of Bush supporters were treated to chants of “three more days”. The life-size Kerry cut-out was held up to various bus windows and was kissed on more than one occasion.

This evening we have a rally with Barney Frank, the first openly gay US Congressman. Frank was actually outed after an indiscretion rather than choosing to come out, but this doesn’t seem to have harmed his career - he subsequently stood for re-election on an openly gay ticket and is in his eleventh term in Congress.

Okay, so last night was the weirdest ever - and it’s not even Hallowe’en yet. Liberty City took the governor of Pennsylvania on a tour of gay and lesbian bars in Philadelphia, getting out the vote and rallying the troops. Apparently, it’s a lucky charm for Governor Ed Rendell, who does his gay tour before every election. All I can say is that they certainly love him here - every bar he entered was filled with screams and shouts, and he got masses of applause. Can’t think of a politician who’d get even close to that reaction, not even Tony Blair entering a room of Labour Students

Anyway, we all got our photos taken with the gov, and waved the signs we’d been making all day on Friday like crazy. He seemed a bit bemused to be followed around by a bunch of Brits - or maybe that was just the seven foot drag queens, various fairies and goblins and the odd Queen Elizabeth who were all out on the streets last night!

Americans seem to go for Hallowe’en in a really big way - so much so that every news programme for the last week has concentrated on the crucial issue of what costume to wear, not analysis of that pesky election, or, heaven forbid, international news such as the state of Yasser Arafat’s health or the crisis in Iraq. I also find it strange that such a consciously religious country goes so crazy for Hallowe’en - devout Christians that I knew growing up refused to take part in any festivities because it was a pagan festival, but that doesn’t seem to trouble even churchgoing folks here.

Originally posted by Katie Hanson

Today is the governor’s lucky bar crawl, and also a party with some cast members from Queer as Folk, who are coming to support the campaign.

On our way into the office this morning we stopped at a farmers’ market and bought home-made produce from an Amish family. Lancaster County, just outside Philadelphia, is home to a large Amish population. While I knew this before we set off, it was still surprising to see people in Amish dress - even down to a baby in a car seat wearing a headscarf.

Another thing that’s odd about elections here is that whilst there are almost no billboards advertising the candidates, the television commercials are ubiquitous! It’s no surprise to watch through an ad break with five commercials, three of which are for candidates.

Some of them are straightforward contrasts of the messages and priorities of the candidates for a particular office - remember, here in PA they’re electing members of congress, a senator, some state-wide offices as well as a President and VP. Many of the others are vicious - I’ve seen the swiftboat veterans for truth so many times now. One particular one that stands out is the anti-Ginny Schrader ads. She’s a Democrat standing in the 8th congressional district, just outside Philly.

The ad goes: “Ginny Schrader’s inexperience could be dangerous. She’s supported by a far left group (caption: the Council for a Liveable World) which advocates deep cuts to the millitary. She raised funds through a far-left group (caption: MoveOn.org) which opposed millitary action against the Taliban in Afghanistan - the Taliban which condones kidnapping and rape of girls. In a dangerous world (caption: Munich, WTO, Madrid etc etc) can you afford to trust the inexperience of Ginny Schrader?”

Unbelievably, it doesn’t mention who her opponent is. Thankfully, that race isn’t a foregone conclusion.

One of the ads I hate most has the family of a 9-11 victim talking about their experiences, then the daughter of the victim telling us how George Bush hugged her when he came to her town. It finishes by saying “surely this is the type of man that we can trust to lead our country?” I’m left incredulous by it - if John Kerry or Bill Clinton or anyone with any ounce of compassion had met that young woman, surely they all would have reacted the same way? We’re expected to vote for the President on the strength of him knowing that a hug was the appropriate reaction to a distraught bereaved young woman?!

Originally posted by Katie Hanson

As Antonia has said, there is no requirement here for electors to be sent information about where their polling place is. Added to that, the Philadelphia Republicans tried to get many polling stations in areas with large African-American populations moved (though their petition was denied). So one of the tasks we are undertaking is sitting on street corners with printouts of all the polling places in the city and which streets they serve. I spent the morning doing this outside a wonderful bookshop called Giovanni’s Room (after the James Baldwin novel of the same name) and was able to help quite a few people find their polling place. This afternoon’s task is to make placards to hold up at Governor Rendell’s tour of the gay bars. Rendell is governor of Pennsylvania, but was previously Mayor of Philadelphia, and is very well thought of in the city.

Been on the street stalls all day, helping people find their polling places and referring them to the election commission if the not-infrequent circumstances that they haven’t received a polling card or made a mistake on a form. I don’t understand why this country, the most developed nation ever, can’t get its elections right. Why don’t they have rolling registration? Why doesn’t everyone have to register like we do in the UK? And why don’t they send everyone a card with their polling station’s location?

With all the chaos in Florida, and the kerfuffles over the voting systems, why the bloody hell don’t they just revert to the British system - an impartial, non-partisan appointed Electoral Commission, pencils, paper and counting by hand? I’ve spoken to too many African Americans who are worried about casting their ballot today for it all to be a fluke.

One of the best things about being here is the chance to meet real Americans - not just Rhodes scholars and tourists. Over the last few days, I’ve chatted to African Americans, Pakistani Americans, Polish Americans, a bunch of Latina high school kids, seniors, loads of union activists from the steelworks and boilermaking plants, older lesbian women, college students and all sorts of other people. So many people are so glad to meet us - I’ve counted 19 “I love your accent”s so far! But really, people are astonished and so pleased and grateful that we came so far to work on the election - even Republicans.

I met the chair of the PA Log Cabin Republicans (like the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality - another pretty delusional group of people) the other other night. We disagreed vehemently on the American recession and Bush’s economic policies. He said that the surplus inherited from Clinton would have been used up by whichever president followed him, as a result of the recession caused by three factors - the dotcom bust, 9/11 and the war on terror. I pointed out that all three affected the British economy too, but that under a centre left government, we’d not only avoided recession but had during the same period reached almost zero unemployment, raised the minimum wage and increased tax credits for working people. We agreed that we’d never agree on that point, but he thanked us for coming to America to work on the election, saying that he was touched by our obvious love for the US and for democracy. Sounds quite trite to type it, but I was moved - I can’t imagine that reaction from a Tory under any circumstances.

So, in each state there are two US senators. Here in PA, they are Republican Arlen Specter (who we all hope is going to be defeated by Joe Hoeffer on Tuesday) and Republican Rick Santorum. Santorum is notoriously anti-gay - he said a few months ago “And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”

Anyway, some in the PA gay community have decided that a fitting punishment would be to name a particularly hardcore sex act after him - www.spreadingsantorum.com (don’t click if you’re of a sensitive disposition…)

Well, today has been more like the elections I’m used to - the routine but vital admin of making sure that all the canvass returns are on the database. So much about US politics is so different, it was really quite comforting to be doing something so familiar - although in the UK I’ve never had the experience of recording that a voter was in gaol so couldn’t vote!

The thing that seems so strange is that the politicians are like showbiz stars - people queue for hours to see Kerry, Edwards and both the Clintons. And once you’re in the venue, a school band plays the national anthem and then local candidates for lower positions (city council, attorneys etc) give lightning speeches of a few minutes each, that say very little about what they’re standing for, but act as cheerleaders, getting the crowds to chant and sing. The best I saw was a guy called Angel Cruz, a Latino city council member in Reading, PA, who gave a bilingual speech and told a wonderful joke: “Jesus would be a Democrat - when he came to Jerusalem, he rode a donkey, not an elephant” - I didn’t get it at the time, but you need to know that the Republican mascot is an elephant, and the Democrat mascot is a donkey! And in an election that’s so focussed on proving that you’re more religious than the other guy, really effective.

Anyway, to get back to my point. Then, before the main act (Clinton, Kerry etc), there’s usually a gap of about an hour, with nothing going on - no warm-up act, nothing! Or maybe a little motivational music, but nothing more. I couldn’t get over how patient all the huge crowds, many of whom must have taken the day off work, were. Personally it seemed really rude to me - to keep thousands of people hanging around. But then, American politics is different, as I’m increasingly finding.

Now, the fun part of my day - I’m off to the lesbian bars to leaflet the women enjoying happy hour…

Originally posted by Katie Hanson

Today we were put to the familiar tasks of data entry and envelope stuffing. Voter i/d sheets here have a barcode for each elector, so the method is to use a wand to read the barcode, then the code for who they support from a laminated sheet (like the ones for loose fruit and baked goods in Sainsbury’s) . It’s between two and three times faster than doing the same task in labour.contact, which is good given the number of sheets of data there are to enter.

The city of Phildadelphia is expected to return Kerry with something like a 300,000 majority, but this has to cancel out the result in the rest of the state, which is more rural and conservative.