Plugged-In Volunteers Blaze New Campaign Trail

Malessa's path to Obama's Sacramento Drive storefront near Mount Vernon is a case in point: Through a series of e-mails, the graduate student at George Washington University meandered electronically from an old friend from Colgate University (now living in Colorado) to that friend's high school buddy's cousin (from Chicago), who is a field organizer for Obama (in Virginia).

West spends long nights working on the campaign. She sits on her black living room couch, laptop open, with her husband, Jeff, usually in retreat in their townhouse basement in the Kingstowne area of southern Fairfax. In February, during primary season, she sent out a call for volunteers willing to travel out of state. She asked for names, the number of spaces available in cars, departure and arrival cities, travel dates and plans for overnight accommodations. She posted the request on her Facebook account and on her personal blog at My.BarackObama.com. She also posted it on seven electronic Obama bulletin boards. And she sent it to 15 Obama e-mail lists in Virginia, some of them with hundreds of subscribers.

West accomplished two things: She compiled a valuable list that she shipped directly to the campaign, which used it and hundreds like it to deploy volunteers across battleground states. She also made contact with hundreds of supporters, infusing them with the idea that their efforts made a difference.

"Chrisi. I was the guy who stood out in front of the King Street Metro passing out literature the day before the election in Virginia," a supporter posted to one of West's call-to-action blog entries. Wrote another: "And I'm the person in Alexandria walking the cat on leash wearing Obama buttons!"

Early on, Obama's online team, led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, established the goal of making the most of connectivity by setting up a computer network that would attract volunteers, make it easy for them to contribute time and money, and help them find each other.

The foundation of that network is the site My.BarackObama.com, where activists can set up home pages, post blog items and sign up for or post events such as canvassing, phone-banking and debate-watching parties. Known as "MyBO" within the campaign and among the activists who use it, the network boasts 1.5 million users and has advertised 100,000 distinct events. West has hosted 61 events advertised through MyBO, she has attended 93 and she has joined 32 of MyBO's groups.

Hughes credited MyBO at least in part for Obama's big win in the Virginia primary -- not to mention the all-volunteer effort to collect twice as many signatures as were necessary to place him on the ballot. Although the Obama campaign had opened a Virginia office only a few days before, the staff walked into the arms of a large family of volunteers who had been organizing through MyBO for nearly a year, he said.

West and the comrades she began meeting in 2007 encountered resistance from some of the older, more established Democratic activists in Alexandria and Fairfax, who had been doing things differently for years and weren't quite ready to hand over the reins.

"They would say things like, 'You really should be coordinating this with the city committee,' when we set up a table at the farmers market or scheduled an Obama meeting at one of our houses," Ruopp said. Obama's campaign structure encouraged Ruopp and West to ignore such admonishments, he added -- and they did.

Sen. John McCain's organization also has recognized the value of social networking. But virtually all polls give Obama an overwhelming lead among the young voters who do it the most. And the Republican's Internet operation, McCain Nation, came far later than MyBO. It now features the same ability to print out canvassing or phone-banking lists so volunteers can get right to work from their homes. But it wasn't until August, for example, that McCain Nation added a function to search for or host events, one of the key tools of MyBO that has been in place for 17 months.

The disadvantage is evident in a recent search for events within 10 miles of West's Fairfax County Zip code: MyBO listed 131 debate-watching parties, phone banks, canvasses and more, and McCain Nation listed five. The advantage can't be explained away by Fairfax County's lean toward Democrats, either. In Republican strongholds Harrisonburg and Roanoke, McCain Nation listed zero events; MyBO listed six.

West doesn't spend much time thinking about McCain. She's too busy typing or texting or jumping up to answer her cellphone.

"Sometimes Monday comes too quickly," she Twittered after a long weekend of volunteering. And in another post: "I'll sleep in November."