Right now, staffers for Senators Barack Obama and John McCain are working frantically to keep everything together.  Below, you’ll find a brief synopsis of what they are doing.

Both campaigns began the political season building a list — or “universe” — of supporters.  Essentially, that means making lots of phone calls — using volunteers as well as paid call centers — to determine which voters are supporting which candidates. If you got a phone call asking you whom you were voting for, it probably came from one of the two presidential campaigns.

The process of adding names to a campaign’s GOTV universe continues pretty much all the way until Election Day, but campaigns also do their best to cut down on the number of names on their list by encouraging early voting.  Both campaigns will attempt to call through their GOTV universes several times today to encourage their supporters to vote, and they will also attempt to knock on as many supporters’ doors as possible.  As one might imagine, getting through the lists is easier when there are fewer voters left to vote.

Both sides will also work during the day today to narrow their lists even more.  They have strategically placed pollwatchers in precincts where they have a lot of supporters.  When a supporter enters the polls to cast a ballot, pollwatchers will cross them off their campaign’s list.  Eventually, the names of voters who have been crossed off — or “struck” — by a pollwatcher will reach the local campaign headquarters.  The campaign will then cross the names of those voters off of their lists, leaving them with fewer people to reach in their next round of phone calls or door knocks.

That means that if you do not want to be hassled by your candidate all day, your best bet is to vote now.  Eventually, the fact that you voted will probably filter back to the campaign, and the calls will stop.

“Clearly the majority, meaning at least 51 percent, of the Ron Paul people have never been involved in politics or only minimally,” Drew Ivers, Paul’s state chairman, told the Iowa Independent. “So the point is to get them to realize that saying `rah, rah Ron Paul,’ or putting a sign in the front yard, or talking to the neighbors about his strengths, just isn’t enough. The only thing that matters is that they go to their caucus and write Ron Paul’s name on a slip of paper when it comes time to vote.

“Probably, mentally, they understand that,” Ivers continued. “But psychologically, I am not sure we, as a campaign, have gotten that to really sink in.”Like the rest of the field, Paul staffers are hustling this weekend to find ways to optimize the visiblity of his very vocal supporters. The campaign is making telephone calls to Republicans across the state gauging Paul’s support in the state and has run newspaper ads in several small town newspapers in the state as well as airing television ads in several markets.

One poll released this week showed Paul with support of 10 percent of likely voters, but Ivers said that might not be an accurate reflection of how the campaign will perform because first-time voters often aren’t included in those surveys.

“Our own polls show that we’re looking pretty decent among registered Republicans if we can just motivate them to go to the caucuses,” Ivers said.

Paul, who is campaigning extensively in New Hampshire and in Western states, has spent just 19 days in Iowa. Those events have drawn crowds of up to 800 people, many of them ardent Paul supporters.

“One of the things I keep telling our people is that we don’t want the Ron Paul people there, we want the new people there. We need you to bring them,” Ivers said.

They’ll get a chance on Wednesday when Paul returns to the state for one last round of campaigning. He’s going to make an appearance at the John Deere plant in Ankeny midday (no official time has been announced) and will make a foreign policy speech at the Hotel Fort Des Moines at 7 p.m. at an event featuring military veterans who have endorsed his candidacy. Thursday he’ll speak at Des Moines University at noon.

After winter break, Linn-Mar High School students return to classes on Jan. 3, so Nieuwsma and the Linn-Mar young Democrats student group have planned a special get-out-the-vote effort on the day of the caucuses. 

They will announce results from a school-wide Linn-Mar vote and also produce a caucus how-to video for the school television station. 

Regarding his candidate, Nieuwsma said that Giuliani “really listened to people’s questions … he really hits it right on. He addresses the question, he doesn’t dodge around it.” 

Nieuwsma said he appreciates that Giuliani “didn’t try to run to the right for the caucuses” and that Iowa voters “have to be able to trust their candidate. They have to be able to relate with their candidate.”

For Nieuwsma, Giuliani is easy to relate to because, “You know him, you can relate to him.”

Here is Nieuwsma talking about Giuliani: