In terms of the things that we as individuals can do to determine the outcome of our primary in Pennsylvania (and later hopefully the general election), it all comes down to implementing an election technique called grassroots campaigning.  This tactic relies on a fairly large and motivated campaign workforce to achieve some very specific goals.  The process is three stages which are described here.

Step 1: Voter Identification

This largely consists of telephone work although this can be done less efficiently in door to door activity and in many cases must be supplemented with door to door work.  It involves the following basic components:

1. Using the wonderful online database provided by the campaign all Republican voters are called to assess their intention of who they will vote for.  Call scripts are provided at the web site.  This is not done as a representative of the campaign you represent but as an anonymous survey group.  This is important as identifying the campaign you are associated with will skew the results and make them useless.  We want to separate the people who will definitely vote for our guy, the ones who will definitely vote for the others and the great majority in between who are only leaning or undecided.
2. Additionally you will be able to ascertain the issues that each voter is most concerned with.
3. You and other precinct volunteers will use the excellent online interface provided by the national campaign to work all of people in your precinct with this technique.  Of course phone numbers are provided for most people.  You will be able to log candidate voting preferences as well as the issues the voter is concerned with.

Step 2: Canvassing

1. With the voters separated into three groups (Paul supporters, other candidates supporters and the great majority remaining subject to influence), the real work begins.  The Paul supporters get our attention to the extent that we can service their needs for yard signs, as a resource for volunteers and perhaps attendance at rallies and events of that nature.  The supporters of other candidates get put in a deep dark hole. They are lost in body and spirit and we will not waste our time with them.
2. The last group of people should constitute the battleground upon which campaigns are won.  We know that they are undecided or just leaning a particularly way (largely as a result of brainwashing by the media).  But as a great philosopher once said, they can unlearn what they have learned.  At least a lot in this group should be susceptible to getting their brain washed.  Our canvassing efforts are mostly door to door but will involve some phone work too.  Basically we want to target each voter with specific and targeted communications such as slim jims and door hangers as well as direct campaign worker to voter contact that address issues that they are concerned with.  If they are concerned about the economy we want to make sure they know our candidate's position on the economy.  His position on Iraq is not so important since the voter isn't as concerned about that.  This is why getting the Voter ID surveys right up front is so important.
3. During this phase we need to continue to assess the position of formerly uncommitted voters by identifying voters we have brought over to the Ron Paul camp.  This all of course gets logged into that wonderful online database.
4. To the extent Ron Paul voters cannot get to the polls (college student, ill or informed) you can  assist them with the Absentee Ballot Application.  We need to assess (and log) difficulties our voters might have in getting to the polls so we can make arrangements to help

Step 3: Get Out The Vote (GOTV)

As we get down to the last week or so of the campaign, we start shifting into GOTV mode in which we principally focus on efforts to get our previously identified voters to the polls.

1. First of all we are only interested in getting our voters to vote.  We just as soon people voting for out opponents stay home so we won't have any contact with those poor lost souls.
2. We need to set up the systems necessary to service our voters who we've previously identified they need assistance getting to the polls.  This might involve driving them to the polls for example.
3. During the GOTV period we will target our voters with reminders via phone or in person about voting.  We don't want to be overbearing about this with 4 calls in the same day but the bottom line is that we want to insure that no one overlooks voting for our candidate because we didn't remind them in time.
4. The last part of this process is to have a poll watcher at every poll recording when one of our people vote (Ron Paul voters are our people after all).  They will have a list of Ron Paul voters (previously identified in steps 1 and 2) and they will periodically communicate who has voted during the course of the day.  This will be logged in the database so that people can be called on election day as a last reminder.
5. We can be handing out literature to people coming to the polls on election day but in the scheme of things this is the lowest priority activity and is only designed to influence the vote a bit not get it out.

As you can imagine, this is a very labor intensive process.  None of our opponents can come close to matching the numbers and passion of our supporters in this election.  In election terms this is the principal advantage we have over the opposition (besides being the only campaign to have a candidate with principles).  We are competitive with money but the media is mostly against us.  The other candidates rely largely on the mass marketing brainwashing media monopolies (say that fast) to manipulate voters which means we have to connect directly with voters to override this programming.  This approach to grassroots campaigning is the way to accomplish that.

Last Thoughts

Here's my checklist on how to get started:

1. First register at www.RonPaul2008.com as a precinct leader.  All this does is give you access to the online data for your precinct.  This doesn't necessarily mean you will be running the precinct (precinct worker might have been a better term but obviously the Paul campaign considers you a leader for supporting this effort) as there will likely be 4-6 people in many precincts and some division of labor will occur.  We can work out those details as people get up to speed on the system.
2. Once you are signed up, explore the videos and other resources in the system.  Remember that the voter data is confidential for use only in the campaign but explore as much of it as you have time for.  In particular watch all of the training videos in the Precinct section as they will give you a lot of specifics of how the grassroots process works in great detail.
3. Each county organization needs to have an actual organization.  Logically we will divide up our county first into regions that track with State Rep districts so this will require 6 regional coordinators.  There will be on average 26 precincts within each region so we will further have to divide each region among 4 or 5 more people which we'll call Precinct Supervisors.  That means that between Regional Coordinators and Precinct Supervisors we need about 25 to 30 coordinator type people over the precincts.
4. The good news is that we have over 500 people who have expressed an interest with the national campaign in being a volunteer.  A significant number of these people will be able to fill these rolls, precinct workers as well as a lot of other campaign assignments not addressed here.  And, I know that this is just the tip of the iceberg of volunteers.  Our main challenge is to quickly assimilate and get this initial group up to speed so we can handle the additional volunteers just on the horizon.
5. Anyone interested in helping us get organized with a management/supervisory role should contact Mike Nixson directly at MikeNixson@cpalpac.com.  If you haven't already volunteered for general campaign work go to our volunteer form on this site.