CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — President Barack Obama's campaign rallies in battleground states aren't just about winning hearts and minds. They're also about something more practical — courting voters and volunteers.
For more than a year, Obama has used appearances that draw thousands of people to focus on the nuts and bolts of campaigning.
That means registering new voters and getting them to the polls — and persuading them to tell others to do the same.
The effort was supposed to have peaked with Obama accepting his party's presidential nomination Thursday before a crowd of 74,000 at an outdoor stadium near the Democratic convention site. It would have been by far his biggest crowd of this campaign as he seeks to build a get-out-the-vote operation. But severe weather warnings forced Obama to scrap those plans.
