Went to the phone banks in Boston today...it's a mixed picture.
On the bright side, the number of phone-bank volunteers is absolutely incredible. Over half of the people I've called had been contacted, multiple times, by the Brown campaign.
Unfortunately, that was also a problem. People do not like to get 5 phone calls asking them to vote on weekends. The core problem is that there have been a massive influx of new volunteers, but they do not log their calls into the phone-bank system properly.
The system is designed so that each target phone number gets one call per survey. But the system is also designed in such a way that an incomplete call (a call that did not log a survey answer) will be called again. Unfortunately, volunteers are calling people, but not logging in the survey responses into the system correctly.
This is a problem. Approximately 5% of Brown supporters were clearly angry at the constant calling.
It is IMPERATIVE that phone-bank coordinators train the volunteers properly. The system is "fool-proof", in the sense that it will not stop calling a number until it gets a survey answer. This means that people will be continually called until the caller logs in response correctly.
I don't want to discourage volunteering, but if you are making calls, please make sure your hard work is properly recorded into the system.