NYT/AP: Obama uses speech for high-tech outreach
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 28, 2008
DENVER (AP) -- Forgive the 75,000 people massing here at Invesco Field Thursday if their thumbs are bit weary by the time Barack Obama takes the stage for a triumphant acceptance of his presidential nomination. For hours before he makes his entrance, these supporters will text message their friends and make phone calls from specially tailored call sheets as part of an unprecedented effort to mobilize voters and get nonvoters to register.
The speech itself may or may not become a seminal moment in the campaign. But this effort to combine telecommunications, microtargeting techniques and Obama's known ability to draw a crowd could be remembered as a shrewd and groundbreaking calculation to expand Obama's vote base.
Obama's campaign has identified 55 million voting age Americans across the country who are not registered to vote. It has done this by comparing registration lists with lists of potential voters gleaned from consumer databases the same way credit card companies track people's spending. Campaign officials estimates more than two-thirds would vote for Obama.
Thursday, as the crowd grew at Invesco Field, a towering projection screen at one end of the stadium flashed a giant map of the United States. The screen urged people to send a text message identifying their top issue -- education, environment, etc. -- and told that each text message would make their city glow brighter on the map.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told the growing crowd that Republicans had wondered why the Obama camp moved the Democratic convention to the stadium for its final night. ''I think it's time we taught them a lesson about how to win an election.''...
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-CVN-Obama-Get-Out-The-Vote.html
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