Mary Maher gives her final report from the Democratic frontline in Pittsburgh.
From the drilling we've had about tomorrow, you'd assume we were on the frontline of the first election in a fledgling Third World nation. Intimidation, misinformation, allegations of fraud and possible fisticuffs have all been promised from 7 a.m. onward.
We know what we can do (phone the Election Protection hotline, send for the judge of elections in the polling centre) and what we cannot do (enter the polling place or make a citizen's arrest, not a legal possibility in Pennsylvania).
Over the weekend we distributed flyers on voters' rights. For a country that doesn't rely on the popular vote to select a president, these are generous to a fault in the name of democracy.
Voters who have moved to a new precinct can vote in the old one if they sign with a new address; they can get a new ballot if they make a mistake on the first one; they can vote after the 8 p.m. closing time if they are in line outside the polling station by then.
If all else fails, they can lodge a provisional ballot. According to the lawyer who addressed us, this option is open to "anyone turned away because the name isn't on the register, or it's the wrong name or the wrong place. Whatever. Tell them to ask for a provisional ballot."
Such ballots will be investigated for validation in the days ahead, and could, if the election is close, tip the balance. The provisional ballot was legally established after the Florida 2000 debacle, and is one more reason why most experts think this election won't be over for weeks.
We, however, think it will be over in our favour fairly soon. Foolhardy to admit, I know, but that's certainly the mood.
It's only partly because at our last rally on Saturday morning, no one even mentioned the Osama bin Laden tape, or what effect it might have.
When I brought that up afterward, the response I got was "well, yeah, but he didn't say anything everybody didn't know, did he? I mean anybody who's seen Fahrenheit 11 knows about Bush just going on reading that kids' book, right?"
It is as if the die is cast, and it's too late for scare tactics.
Our rallies are our barometer. They have been a regular, and somewhat resented, interruption to our work since we began campaigning, because the major bonus to canvassing is that it's afternoon work.
Most of our days have started at the crack of noon, with a gentle shuffle into the mini-vans and mandatory stops for coffee at Starbucks and doughnuts at Crispy Crème.
On rally mornings, we're hauled down to the Unitarian church by 10 a.m. The organisers pace up and down, leading the steady handclap until it accelerates to wild applause. When they roar "Good morning", we roar in reply. The week's news is delivered in headline bursts to more applause.
Week after week, the news has improved. Last week, it was off the scale. An independent analysis of the 12 battleground states showed that Democrats had registered two new voters for every one registered by the Republicans, and that more younger people between 18 and 21 had registered than ever before. We cheered, we chanted, we clapped to a crescendo pitch, and we were released onto the streets.
There are 60 of us now. Four out of five are blacks, including two Brians, a Brenda, a Desmond, and one young man whose first name is Quinlan. They were astonished when I pointed out their Irish connections, especially Desmond, who is 20 and understandably assumed his name had African origins since he'd been called after Archbishop Tutu.
Linda has more direct Irish connections. Her grandfather's name was Gavin. Because miscegenation was illegal in the South, he and her grandmother never married, but lived together and had several children. There are similar stories, she says, all over the southern states.
Linda was a teenager in Birmingham, Alabama, when the civil rights movement launched the bus protests in the early 1960s. "We all used to get on the bus after school and wait 'til it was going, and then we'd get up and move to the front and wouldn't budge 'til the driver got the police to march us off.
"We were just kids, we were having fun. We used to go into all the white-only stores too, on a Saturday. We'd walk in and stroll around looking at all the clothes, and when someone came running over, pointing to the sign, we'd say "Oh really? Is that what it says? We can't read."
She has a set speech, delivered in a disarmingly sweet voice, for blacks who refuse to vote. "Don't you know there was a time when we couldn't put an X on a ballot paper? People died to get black people the vote. Didn't you ever hear of the Freedom Fighters? They used to go around Birmingham in the back of hearses, because nobody'd stop a hearse to search it. It was the only way they were safe."
The black vote is being courted by the Republicans now for the first time in anyone's memory, with constant radio ads aimed at the upwardly mobile.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Republicans are also targeting the Amish community, stressing Christian family values, and the immigrant Russian Jews, stressing Bush's pro-Israeli views. There are about 50,000 Amish in the region, and no more than 5 per cent usually vote. The Republicans are determined to increase that to 20 per cent, the report said. Some say determination, we say desperation.
No figures were given for the size of the Russian Jewish community, which is clustered in a lovely old Pittsburgh neighbourhood called Squirrel Hill. It's on our books because so many of the big, comfortable houses have been converted into flats. But there are still family homes with swings on their porches next to the Halloween pumpkins, their lawns now carpeted in copper and gold autumn leaves rolling down to brick-paved streets.
Here too there are signs, new posters up since events in Iraq have recently become even darker: "Support Our Troops! Get Bush Out!" and "Who's The War Criminal?", with an evil caricature of the current president.
We did a quick sweep through Squirrel Hill last week. I handed our voters' rights flyer to a woman raking leaves. She sighed as she took it and said: "Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was just a landslide for Kerry?"
Actually, a majority the size of sand dune would do fine.