ILWAUKEE - Ollie Thompson spends his lunch hour hovering, sometimes hollering, at the exit to Lena's Food Market on the city's west side, allowing no shopper to pass without first making a commitment to vote and memorize the date of the presidential election.
''Have you registered? It won't take but two seconds,'' sings Thompson, whose old baseball jacket, covered with stickers touting Al Gore, shows where his loyalties lie. ''What do you mean, you don't like to vote? You're not a citizen if you don't vote!''
Downtown, Eve Hall is also devoting her lunch hour to getting out the vote. As the state Republican Party's director of outreach, she has invited leaders and professionals from Milwaukee's minority communities to dine at the elegant Wisconsin Club and hear a low-key pitch for George W. Bush.
''We're making progress,'' says Hall, who believes the GOP's unprecedented election-year advertising and personal contacts in the city's traditionally Democratic black and Hispanic neighborhoods will help Bush.
With the presidential election a week away, an all-out mobilization is underway to persuade people to vote. Thompson and Hall, both African-Americans, are two among hundreds of foot soldiers in the opposing armies that see Milwaukee County - with its Democratic, urban hub of ethnic and racial minorities bordered by Republican-leaning suburbs - as the central combat zone in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
Even with a tight presidential race here and across the country, political analysts predict that turnout nationally will be about what it was in 1996, when 49 percent of those eligible voted.
In Wisconsin, turnout generally is above average - it was 57.9 percent here four years ago - and a state law that lets voters register as late as Election Day means the campaigns' turnout troops can toil up to the last minute.
''We're going into Nov. 7 neck and neck, and this war is going to be won on the ground,'' said Angelique Pirozzi, 29, director of the Wisconsin Democratic Party's campaign. Pirozzi, a Massachusetts native and a veteran of two Clinton-Gore campaigns, has worked since May, and now nearly around the clock, commanding Gore's field operations and get-out-the-vote effort. ''Fortunately, this is what Democrats do best,'' Pirozzi said.
The Democrats are flooding likely voters with targeted mail and e-mail messages. Phone banks run by volunteers, including Spanish speakers, are making calls to carefully selected demographic groups and undecided voters. Next weekend, automated dialing systems will deliver thousands of taped, get-out-the-vote messages from popular Democrats - the Rev. Jesse Jackson to black voters, Tipper Gore to women, Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl to seniors.
Ollie Thompson said a visit by President Clinton to the west side of Milwaukee is his get-out-the-vote dream. It's not likely to happen; Democratic sources say the risk is too high that Clinton would alienate undecided voters. Instead, Gore stopped yesterday in the Republican strongholds of Green Bay, Waukesha, and Fond du Lac to energize Democrats and woo the undecided.
Pirozzi gets nightly reports from operatives around the state on the number of phone calls made, volunteers recruited, and drivers enlisted for Nov. 7. On Election Day, Pirozzi will have poll watchers at every precinct; if turnout seems low, vans will be sent into neighborhoods to round up voters.
''Knock and drag - we will knock on doors and drag voters to the polls - it's to our benefit,'' Pirozzi said.
In the heat of battle, Pirozzi said, she expects dirty tricks from the Republicans. In that category she puts a television ad scheduled to begin airing tomorrow in Madison, the heart of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's strength in the state. The ad, paid for by the centrist Republican Leadership Council, features Nader criticizing Gore's environmental record.
''The Republicans are trying to increase Nader's margin to bite into Gore,'' Pirozzi said. ''We are nervous [about the ad] and it strengthens our argument that it is in the Republicans' interest for Nader to do well.''
GOP activists in Wisconsin, who have worked for almost two years building what they call the most intensive voter turnout program in state history, say they are unhappy about the Nader ad, too.
''I think it's goofy and a distraction from the most important task at hand - getting Bush voters to the polls,'' said Rod Hise, executive director of the state Republican Party. ''We know this state, and we could do without outside help that presumes to know what works best in Wisconsin.''
In its targeted e-mailing, individual and automated telephoning, from former first lady Barbara Bush to Governor Tommy Thompson, and literature distribution, the GOP is going toe-to-toe with the Democrats for turnout. What's new is that Republicans here never have had so much money. The GOP earmarked $40 million nationally for get-out-the-vote efforts alone and grass-roots organizing.
Mary Buestrin of Mequon, who is heading the grass-roots effort, said the party has built a statewide network of county chairs for Bush, and cultivated more than 20 coalitions, including groups of farmers, lawyers, and Roman Catholics, and appealed to minority voters through personal contacts and advertising.
''It feels so different than it did four years ago,'' Buestrin said. ''We have a candidate who is exciting and energizing our base.''
But the Republican base alone is not sufficient to provide a Bush victory in Wisconsin. Democratic presidential candidates have carried the state in the last three elections, and organized labor is putting its muscle behind Gore, designating a coordinator at every work site to get the state's 450,000 AFL-CIO members to the polls, said Sara Rogers, the union's political director.
Bush's strategy is to cut into Gore's strength in Milwaukee County. One effort was Bush's big rally in the heart of the city last week. Another is the 80,000 phone calls being made by GOP volunteers in the county. Finally, there are supporters like Perfecto Rivera, head of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, who has been walking the streets of Milwaukee's fast-growing south side Latino neighborhoods, touting a GOP message of economic and educational opportunity.
''I thought people would walk away from me,'' said Rivera, a banker and developer who recently hosted a Milwaukee event with George P. Bush, the candidate's Hispanic nephew. ''Instead, I find heads nodding and people saying, `Bush is our man.'''
Pedro Colon, the first Hispanic elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly, has worked just as tirelessly here for Gore. He is not convinced either party is making new inroads with Latinos, who historically vote at half the rate of other groups.
''I don't know if these efforts will make a difference,'' he said. ''But this has all the qualities of a great race, and I tell the kids, `if a basketball game is tied, this is not the time to leave the stadium.'''
