Two weeks ago I came to California to follow and get involved in the Obama ground operations. The journalists and politcos have gone mostly to Washington and Chicago, where the big names reside. But this is where all the action is taking place.

California is the wind that drives Obama’s sails. It has the most number of electoral college votes, its liberal entertainment and tech elite has largely backed Obama, most of the money raised has come from this state and – most important of all – this ground zero of the volunteer effort.

Every day, for the next three days, Californians will make more than 2 million calls to swing states across the country encouraging fellow Democrats and independents voters to support Obama and go out and vote. The state is responsible for 50% of such calls across the entire country. People have left this state by the busloads to go to Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Indiana, Florida and even as far as Pennsylvania, to provide support to local ground operations. I’ve been party to some conference calls and let me tell you – it’s like they’re preparing for war.

Unless you’re willing to sit there day in and day out to be part of these operations, its difficult to explain the breadth of this operation. At our office every day at least 10 women over the age of 65 come in just to volunteer and make some calls or bring cookies for others. At least about 10 kids under the age of 17 will come in with their parents or friends to support Obama. That religious zeal is being translated into a solid effort.

In our office in LA, yesterday we had over 300 volunteers come in throughout th day to make a total of over 20,000 calls. Keep in mind that this is one office and there are several others. There are also over 50 phonebanks across LA County (which has more people than 30 American states) making calls to people across the country.

When all this is over, I’m going to spend more time writing about how the software and strategy involved to take into account different stages of the election. I wanted to head out to Nevada for election day for their massive GOTV (get out the vote) operations but its likely I’ll be staying in LA. If Obama wins Virginia and holds on to Pennsylvania early on, then its all over. Three long days to go. Anything could happen.

· About the author: Sunny Hundal is editor of Liberal Conspiracy. He works full time as a journalist, commentator, blogger, activist and general layabout. He was voted Guardian blogger of the year in 2006. Also at: Pickled Politics, on Twitter and Comment is free.

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· Filed under: Blog , Foreign affairs , United States