By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Saturday before an election is to politics what the two-minute warning is to football.

That explains why, across the Tristate, the push was on to secure votes. Candidates wore out shoe leather and risked calloused hands trying to reach as many people as they could; hundreds of volunteers for political parties, individual candidates, school issue campaigns and even organizations whose only purpose is to encourage voting were out in force from dawn to dusk.

And they'll be back at it today, tomorrow and right up to the moment the polls close Tuesday.

Hamilton County Republican volunteers, along with Republican Ohio Supreme Court candidate Maureen O'Connor, were outside Nippert Stadium on the University of Cincinnati campus Saturday, handing out fliers for the GOP ticket.

Dozens of other Republicans volunteered for phone bank operations for Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and Ohio Treasurer Joe Deters, making calls to thousands of Republican homes in Southwest .

"It is absolutely crucial that we get people motivated and out to vote,'' said Chip Gerhardt, vice chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party.

In Ohio, Democrats - with the help of their friends in organized labor - have proven to be very good at the kind of last-minute campaigning that identifies their likely voters and pushes them out to the polling places.

Saturday morning, Melanie Bates, executive director of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, and David Little, a Democratic political operative who is working for statewide candidates, took a half-dozen student volunteers from Walnut Hills High School to Findlay Market in Over-the-Rhine, where they passed out literature for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tim Hagen and others.

"I think Democrats are starting to wake up to this election,'' Mr. Little said. "I think we are going to get out people out.''

One factor that could make a difference in turnout in Cincinnati is the $480 million bond issue for new school construction.

Saturday morning, at the downtown Reading Road office of Cincinnatians Active to Support Education (CASE), a desk was piled high with a stack of the names, addresses and phone numbers of about 6,700 newly-registered voters gathered recently by CASE supporters.

Each and every one of those 6,700, CASE campaign organizers say, will get a call between now and Tuesday from volunteers .

Dozens of CASE supporters gathered at the headquarters Saturday morning for coffee, doughnuts and a pep rally before fanning out into neighborhoods in the Cincinnati school district to do leafleting and distribute yard signs.

"What you do over the next few days is important,'' CASE president Mark Turner told the volunteers. "We need to bring the energy up.''

Not every get-out-the-vote effort Saturday was aimed at electing specific candidates or passing particular ballot issues.

Some, like the get-out-the-vote drive run by the Cincinnati Chapter of the NAACP from its Bond Hill offices, was aimed simply at driving up Tuesday's turnout - in the case of the NAACP, turnout from Cincinnati's black community.

"We're trying to do the same things a candidate does running for office, but our job is different - we just want people to get out and vote," said Ishton Morton, coordinator of the NAACP effort.

Mr. Morton said he spent several days looking closely at voter registration in targeted precincts in Cincinnati, trying to find the precincts where registration is relatively high, but voter turnout is low.

On Tuesday, an NAACP truck will visit those precincts with mounted loudspeakers blaring out a message telling people to go vote.

"Being registered is one thing,'' Mr. Morton said. "Going out to vote is another.''

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com