At 6 a.m. on the final day, volunteers arrive to repack the games, checking for lost pieces or misplaced instructions.

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Turns out most of the folks on the course that day were volunteers and they all had drinking passes.

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Near Christmas, volunteers put on a dazzling display of lights and, on the day before Christmas Eve, The Ship Inn cooks up a traditional dish of stargazy pie in honour of local lad Tom Bawcock, who supposedly ended a village famine by braving storms to land a bounty of fish.

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At stake in these battles is not simply what form of identification voters must remember to put in their pockets on election day, or what information voter-registration volunteers must remember to include on their forms, but possibly the presidency itself.

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Democrats say they'll have 250, 000 volunteers working in battleground states on Election Day -- nearly three times the number working for Al Gore four years ago.

CNN: Ground war: Getting out the vote

But every day, hundreds of ASF volunteers battle for the species on the ground, rebuilding and restoring river and fish-spawning habitat in the Atlantic Canada provinces and Maine.

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The campaign says it has recruited 50, 000 volunteers to help get out voters on Election Day in Wisconsin.

CNN: Ground war: Getting out the vote

On Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013, the day before Super Bowl Sunday, volunteers will participate in a day of service in an effort to renovate and enhance five New Orleans Recreation Development Commission (NORDC) playgrounds.

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Inauguration activities kicked off on Saturday with the Obamas and Biden and his wife, Jill, leading volunteers across the country in National Day of Service Activities.

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