You know what to do. Get out and VOTE OBAMA!!!

We are happy to announce the completion of our Battleground State Project! After the convention in Denver we purchased 10,000 button supplies with the goal of sending out at least a 1,000 buttons to all key battleground states across the country. We expanded that a goal a bit and purchased a few thousand more buttons over the last couple of weeks and even sent some crucial states like Colorado and Ohio extra batches.

I have to admit, the idea of sending out over 10,000 buttons in just a matter of weeks seemed unattainable at the start of this. After all, we had made 10,000 buttons in the period during the caucuses/primaries which as we all know went on for months and months. So how did we do it? With the awesome help of volunteers and generous donations who helped pay for the supplies and shipping costs out of their own pockets. You are all so awesome. You are what has made this campaign so inspiring. And a special shout out to our friend Mary who bought a button machine a few weeks ago and has allowed us to expand the project.

The states we sent out over a 1,000 buttons post-Denver are represented in blue on the map above. Astute political junkies and followers of FiveThirtyEight.com will argue that there are some battleground states that aren’t up there. This is due in part to our network of button makers who we work with across the country have actually sent large amounts of buttons to some of those key places such as Indiana, and rather than over saturate one place we try to spread the love. We keep track of this using a collaborative Google Docs spreadsheet so we know where each other has sent buttons out. And yes we are keeping track of the combined output and our network of button makers have sent out an astounding 60,000 buttons! Yes we can, indeed!

This past Saturday an article about independent grassroots efforts to support the candidates appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. We’d been interviewed for the article and they came to take photos at our last button making event on 10/8 at Stellar Pizza, however we didn’t know when it was coming out.

Imagine our surprise Saturday morning when we started getting a deluge of emails from Seattlites interested in buttons and button making. One person mentioned the article, thank goodness, or we would have been clueless forever. Then imagine our further surprise when Jody went to pick up a copy of the paper and there were our buttons on the front page!

We think we’ve finally gotten back to everyone that emailed. Thank you all for your interest! If you haven’t heard from us, please email again. It might have gotten lost in the email flood.

We are now in the final stages of the button operation. I can’t believe it’s already mid-October! We want to have all the remaining buttons for battleground states sent out by mid-week next week in order for the campaign field offices to have them the week before election day. We’re focusing all our time and energy on that right now, along with some GOTV activities locally. It’s crunch time, folks!

Unfortunately, that means we won’t be having any more public button making parties. We want to thank you all that came out to help make buttons at the events, and all of you that were interested but didn’t get to make it to one, and everyone that donated supplies and cash to keep the operation going–THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts. You all ROCK!

We’re way behind in reporting where we’ve been sending buttons out to and hopefully we’ll get that updated in the next few days. I can tell you now though that we got buttons sent out just in time to Cincinnati, OH for the Vote Early/Rock Late concert happening today! The National and The Breeders are playing. Another campaign concert we wish we were able to be at, but buttons will have to do.

I am not sure the answer to the question “Can a button change the world?” but I do know that one person can make the world a better place. I have met a lot of amazing people this year through my involvement with the campaign. One of these individuals is Majid Al-Bahadli. He is an Iraqi-American and a fellow button maker. He is also an Obama National Delegate from Washington State and not surprisingly he got a decent amount of press at Denver being the first Iraqi-American delegate. The following LA Weekly article was reprinted by the Huffington Post: “The Delegate From Sadr City”. It is very much worth your time to read it.

Majid’s favorite and most popular button design above says Obama’s name in Hebrew, Arabic and English. The button has made a very strong impression on people across the country and the world. I am very grateful for Majid for allowing us to include it on our templates page. Thank you Majid.