Michael Bersin’s lead paragraph yesterday is also the lead for this posting:

Eleven years ago I attended campaign management school. The lead instructor said, “Now, I’m going to talk about yard signs.” Everyone in the room eagerly leaned forward in anticipation of his wisdom about the proper mix of yard signs to 4 x 8s and their priority in the campaign budget. The instructor continued, “You only get enough yard signs so that you can plant them between your candidate’s home and their place of work. That way they think their signs are everywhere.”

The Obama campaign is putting its money (and time and effort) where that campaign instructor’s mouth was. They are forgoing signs and bumper stickers in favor of real work. I can live with that. I can even do some of the work.

The campaign’s final hard push to register voters is in its last two weeks now. (Registration ends on October 8th.) Last week alone, St. Louis area Obama supporters exceeded their goal of registering 2400 new voters and managed to sign up 3,492. And they’re serious about getting those cards to the proper authorities tout de suite. If you hand a blank registration card (available from any Obama office) to a voter and get him to fill it in, the office wants that card back no later than the next day. No later. And they will hand deliver the cards to the election board. They’re not trusting the U.S. Postal Service to deliver them to the right place and get them there quickly enough. These cards represent people’s precious right to vote, and they are guarded with care.

So much for the past. Now for this week, or what’s left of it. The campaign in Missouri is preparing to knock on the doors of 100,000 unregistered citizens in one day, this Saturday. The St. Louis Metro region alone is aiming to knock on 50,000 doors that day. They need your help. If you want to do a shift of door knocking on Saturday, great. Or if you want to help keep one of the offices organized that day, just offer. If you want to help get packets organized before Saturday, you’ll be greeted with hugs and kisses.  

But do something. To help, go here and find a handy neighborhood Obama office that’s waiting to give you a job. Do it now. Because Saturday is upon us.

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. To quote Michael quoting FiveThirtyEight:

…A lot of people aren’t going to like hearing this truth, but organizers recognize that the majority of people who walk into offices for yard signs are, for volunteering purposes – and this is a technical term – useless. In the majority, these people are not going to knock, they’re not going to make phone calls. Instead, they are going to throw the organizer’s incredibly precious, sleep-deprived time down a bottomless abyss of irretrievability.

That sleep-deprived organizer isn’t wasting his time on signs this week. He’s revving up for this Saturday, and he needs you. Here’s your chance to scare the b’jesus out of Republicans: go register people.