So, you do show up, but you don’t check in. That’s much better than checking in and not showing up. And definitely better than neither checking in nor showing up. I wrote that we’re in the home stretch of the election campaign. A second round is hanging by a thread and depends entirely on our efforts. Toward the end of summer, many pensioners returned to the city after spending time at their dachas (country cottages), where they heard nothing but state radio. And many vacationers are back too—people who weren’t following the news at all. That’s a million people who were never reached by campaigning before. It’s a great opportunity. We know for certain that when we speak to someone directly, they’re ready to vote for me, even if until then they got their news only from television. The zombie box (slang for TV propaganda) is nothing compared with a minute of honest conversation with a volunteer campaigner who truly believes in the cause. This is a chance for everyone to make a real contribution to our shared victory. Run your own small election campaign. Now then, about planning. Look here: http://v.navalny.ru/
Here are our target staffing needs for volunteer campaigners. Looks intimidating, right? It may seem that, for example, today, August 30, we’re still short by as many as 1,100 people. But that’s not actually the case—you’re just not checking in. On Tuesday, we needed 931 people, and in reality (the campaign headquarters’ situation center compiles a daily summary) 799 showed up, so we were short by only 132. Yesterday, since the day coincided with the "meet-and-greet" event (I’ll write about it separately), even without counting those who came not to work as campaigners at the cube booth, but simply to meet people, we exceeded the plan by a wide margin. There were 1,322 people. We handed out 450,000 copies of the newspaper. That many campaign contacts brings in 50,000–60,000 voters. That’s huge. After all, we need only 1.5 million votes to win.
However, we all understand that when a plan is either missed or exceeded, that points first and foremost to problems with planning. We need to know how many newspapers to bring. We need to know how many cube booths to set up. We need to be sure there’s nothing like this: 30 people at one cube booth having a great time, while at another there are two heroes standing there, lonely and intimidated. Most importantly, all of us need to scale up our efforts steadily and be confident that there won’t be a slump on any day, even if it rains. So once again, check in: http://v.navalny.ru/ Contribute to the campaign and make use of this historic chance to truly change something. Remember: the huge building of a bright future will be built faster with you, without you it won’t be built at all—but all of us need to know where and when you’ll bring your stone. And how many times. If only so that we can deliver the cement in time and you won’t be left waiting for nothing. Planning, my friends, planning is everything. The жаба на трубе (literally “the toad on the pipe,” a mocking nickname for the authorities) thinks it is highly organized and that we are chaos. That’s not true: http://v.navalny.ru/