Yes Mr. President, you can count on it! UPDATE: Followup message.

In my e-mail box this morning was a message from the Community Organizer in Chief encouraging me to make a commitment to get out and vote in November:

Aye —

Eighteen years ago, shortly after graduating from law school, I helped lead a voter registration campaign in Chicago that generated record turnout on Election Day.

That experience taught me one of the most important lessons I ever learned as a community organizer: When people promise that they’ll do something — like voting — they are far more likely to do it.

That’s why one key part of our Vote 2010 plan this year is to get folks like you from across the country to commit to vote, to make sure we get as many people as we can to cast their ballots this fall.

But getting the commitments we need starts with your own promise to make it to the polls and cast your ballot.

Will you please commit to vote in the 2010 elections?

Over the next 82 days, volunteers across the country will spend countless hours calling voters and knocking on their doors, asking them the same question.

And you can bet that I am counting on you to join them in talking to voters in your community.

This election offers a stark choice. We Democrats are hard at work trying to move America forward, repairing a decade of damage and growing an economy based on the Main Street values of hard work and responsibility.

We’ve fought for and won historic reforms to our health care system, a victory 100 years in the making, and to Wall Street, the most sweeping overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression.

But after years of policies that landed us in the worst recession since the 1930’s, the Republicans who got us there have not come up with anything different from the policies of George W. Bush.

We simply cannot afford to go backwards or let them repeal our reforms. And making sure we can continue moving forward starts with your own promise to cast your ballot in these elections.

Please commit to vote this fall:

http://my.barackobama.com/Commitment

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

Yes Mr. President, you can count on it!

In fact, I am looking forward to it more than perhaps any election in my lifetime.

*****************************************

Today, 8/16/10, I got the following e-mail message following up on what the President had to say last week:

Aye —

Did you see the President’s email?

He’s right.

Studies have shown that when people pledge to do something, they’re much more likely to follow through. This simple but powerful concept helped us make history in 2008, when first-time voters who made a commitment played a critical role in the election. This fall, volunteers are taking this strategy into communities across the country once again.

But it begins with you. Will you join me in committing to vote in the 2010 elections?

http://my.barackobama.com/Commitment

Thanks,

David Plouffe

Yes, Mr. Plouffe, I fully intend to vote.

Absolutely.