HICAGO - It's local lore that dead voters have made the difference in close Cook County elections. Tomorrow's presidential contest is a cliffhanger, so Alice Tregay has lined up the funeral directors, with limousines ready to roll.
It's not what you might think. As get-out-the-vote coordinator for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push group, Tregay is on the front line of the final battle of Election 2000. She is mobilizing every resource to get African-American voters to the polls, including enlisting morticians with vehicles to transport people who need rides.
''We're letting all the nursing homes know they should call if residents need transportation and would like a ride in a limousine,'' said Tregay, who also marshaled troops for a weekend of leafleting at churches, knocking on doors, and driving sound trucks through South Side neighborhoods, urging people to vote.
After months of candidate rallies, advertising, and debates, it all comes down to the ground war at the grass roots, where the countdown is being measured in the hours and minutes, the manpower and persuasion that the partisans of Al Gore and George W. Bush have left to persuade people to vote.
The Democratic and Republican parties have orchestrated their biggest-ever turnout drives, knowing that a hundred or even a handful of votes per precinct could make the difference in a race that is too close to call nationally and skintight in a dozen key states.
''We have a very proud history of winning elections on the strength of our message, the power of our ideas, and the ability to use good, old-fashioned shoe leather,'' said Jenny Backus, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee.
Democrats are relying on a combination of new technology and tried-and-true techniques, Backus said. In the final days, the party's goal was for Democrats in a 1.5 million-name database to receive 30 million e-mails, 10 personal or automated contacts each, and the possibility of having one of 50,000 party volunteers knock on their door on Election Day.
Terry Holt, communications director for Republican Victory 2000, says, ''Ours is an unprecedented effort to reach Republicans, independents, and swing voters with George W. Bush's message.''
The national turnout campaign has a budget of more than $40 million, plus whatever funds state parties put up. In its turnout push, the GOP sent about 50 million pieces of mail to homes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, and Florida alone.
Illinois was not expected to be a battleground. The vice president was so sanguine about winning the state and its 22 electoral votes that he stopped advertising here, as did Bush. But with new polls showing a shrinking lead, Gore not only went back on the air, but he dashed into heavily Democratic Chicago last week for a huge get-out-the-vote rally that took place at about the same hour Bush was holding his own huge rally in heavily Republican DuPage County, where GOP turnout is essential.
Over the weekend, bigwigs from both parties barnstormed Illinois in buses and airplanes. Bush supporters set up at least 200 phone banks, in some places manning them with people who spoke Polish and Chinese. The last of more than 4 million GOP mailings to likely Illinois voters also went out over the weekend.
''I think we have the energy edge,'' Illinois's Republican lieutenant governor, Corrine Wood, said at a rally for women Friday in Chicago. ''You can't buy that kind of enthusiasm.''
But can the GOP match the vaunted Chicago Democratic voter machine of Mayor Richard Daley? Spokeswoman Becky Carroll said Democrats are taking nothing for granted. Radio ads were beamed into the black and Hispanic communities over the weekend, and Democratic homes received 1.5 million targeted phone calls, including automated ones from President Clinton, actor Ed Asner, and former senator Paul Simon.
Carroll measures voter intensity by the fact 150,000 Gore yard signs were snatched up in a day.
''We're going to annoy people until they vote,'' said Matt Hynes, head of the Democratic campaign, who is deploying an Election Day army of 15,000 precinct workers to make sure that Democrats across Illinois get to the polls.
Democrats also will get some help from their allies at the AFL-CIO, which endorsed Gore and has mounted its largest, most expensive turnout effort. Over the weekend, union president John Sweeney walked and knocked on doors in Philadephia. Tomorrow, members of the United Auto Workers will do the same in Michigan, since their contract with the Big Three automakers allows them Election Day off.
The Illinois AFL-CIO will have made 1 million member-contacts on behalf of Gore, said spokesman Bill Looby.
The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League is also working for Gore. Over the weekend, 64,000 Illinois women who support abortion rights received letters and phone calls reminding them to vote; nationally, the number was 2.1 million. Younger women heard from actress Sarah Jessica Parker; women over 35 got automated calls from league president Kate Michelman.
The National Rifle Association, which endorsed Bush, has run its own independent turnout campaign. It has spent millions - ''in the eight figures,'' said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam - on mailings, phone calls, and television and radio advertising in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan alone. Last week, NRA president Charlton Heston led a bus tour energizing members in seven states on behalf of Bush.
Alice Tregay of Rainbow Push is coordinating her efforts in Chicago with the NAACP, which earmarked a record $7 million for a national turnout campaign this year. But hers is a shoestring operation, Tregay said, with a $600-a-week budget for feeding her volunteers in the field.
