This afternoon I went walking around my neighborhood with a clipboard full of voter registration forms and the printout from the Neighbor to Neighbor canvass available on this website. In addition to checking the homes on the printout, I asked everyone I saw if they were registered to vote. I saw a young man sitting in a car in front of a house as if waiting for someone to arrive home, so I walked up and asked him if he needed to register to vote. He said he did, but he didn't know if he could since he has no permanent address here. He has just been staying with a friend who lives in my neighborhood. He is from Texas, but has come to VA looking for work, hoping to find a job and a place to live, then to send for his girlfriend and their two children. I got out my registration rule book and confirmed that he could give as his address where he is currently staying (with the friend) and show as his ID at the polls his social security card, so he filled out the form. He was very happy about being able to register, so I asked if he had decided who he would vote for. He replied, "Not yet. I'm trying to listen to what the candidates are saying and make a good decision. I don't want to vote for Barack Obama just because we both are black." "Right," I injected, "just like I don't want to vote to McCain and Palin just because she is a woman and so am I. What issues are important to you? What are you looking for in a candidate?" "I'm looking for someone to do something to help people like me!" he answered. "I dropped out of school in eleventh grade to get a job and take care of our baby. I've usually been able to find something, but I just can't get any work anywhere now. Not McDonald's. Not day labor. Nothing. I don't have a GED, and I can't seem to get one. I went over here to the community college to see about it, but it costs money to take the class, and I don't have any to spare since I don't have a job. People don't want to hire me without a GED or a permanent address here. I don't know what to do. My girlfriend and the children are in Texas where the hurricane hit, and she says they have no electricity and are boiling their water. I am trying to find a job and a place to live so they can come here, but I just can't seem to make any progress.""Well," I stated, "Barack Obama is the candidate for you. He has pledged himself to working hard to help people who are stuck in this cycle of frurstration you're in. He understands what it is like since his mother had him when she was 18, and they had to use food stamps just to eat at times. John McCain does not have a clue. He doesn't even know how many houses he owns! I bet you don't have health insurance, do you? (He said he did not) Barack Obama has a plan to make health insurance affordable for every American. John McCain is not even concerned with that issue. He did not say one word about health care in his speech at the Republican Nat. Convention. You need to get your GED, and I am going to give you some information about that, then you need to go to college. I can tell you are very intelligent. You could go to college and get a much better job than you can with just a GED. (He injected that he had a 3.0 grade point average when he dropped out of school.) Barack Obama has a plan to help you with college expenses when you get to that point.
Well, we talked a good long while, and I gave him names of several places to contact for help with housing, GED, job search, etc. He thanked me for encouraging him about school and said he would call the places I suggested. And he said he was going to vote for Barack Obama. To think that this downward spiral started with an unplanned teenage pregnancy Too bad his mother was not the governor of Texas... It is a sad situation when someone is trying to get out of such a mess and just keeps running into a wall.
God,help us all to work hard every day doing all the things we can to ensure that Barack Obama is elected president, and help us to also elect Senators and Representatives who will work with him to solve the problems our nation faces.
Yesterday I spent six and a half hours at our public library, sitting at a table with a "register to vote here" sign. Lots of people stopped to ask questions about registering, some did register, some took forms home to family members, and some told me they weren't interested in voting. One man said he had never voted and never would because "they already know who is going to win anyway." I asked, "Who's they?" and he said, "The politicians."
I spoke with several who identified themselves as felons, and I advised them of the process for restoration of rights. Virginia has some of the most restrictive rules for this of any state, I believe, and restoration is at the sole discretion of the governor. Our current governor is working hard to restore voting rights to those who apply, but many felons who are eligible for restoration do not realize that or do not understand the process.
I found the library to be a high traffice area with a good cross section of the population - college students, military families needing to register at a new address, senior citizens, etc. I did this registration in a non-partisan manner with no Obama materials in sight, but plenty of people asked me who I was supporting, so I was happy to tell them. One woman filled out her registration form, then said, "I'm an independent. Tell me why I should vote for whichever candidate you are supporting." I hope I convinced her!
I wrote another letter to the editor of our Republican leaning newspaper. An editorial last week said Obama supporters should ask themselves if a man who was a POW would really cheat (as McCain is accused of doing in the Saddleback Q and A session) to influence an election. I wrote that the editor and everyone else needed to ask if a POW who cheated on his wife and even lied to his parter in adultery about his age would cheat to influence an election. My letter has not been published yet, but I was happy to see this a.m. that someone else's raising the same question was published. Another editorialthis week was a prediction that Sen. Obama could not carry the south. I'm going to start cutting out all the editorials negative to Senator Obama and use them for inspiration to do more work to elect him, then I'll write the Free Lance star editor on Nov. 5 and tell him he was wrong.
Yesterday my daughter, who is an Obama Fellow, and I spent close to five hours at our county fair working to register voters. Three other volunteers helped for part of that time, and our total at the end was 15 new registrations in hand plus two applications that went home with people who didn't want to leave them with us. This is hard work! I approached countless people, many of whom said they were already registerd, some of whom said they were not interested in registering, and a few of whom actually were willing to sign up. Some were very eager, but others took a lot of prodding. One young girl giggled uncontrollably the entire time she was completing the application. Her date kept telling her, "You need to do this." Good for him! One young man told me that this was his eighteenth birthday. I was glad to get a form into his hands for a birthday present.
It is disheartening, though, to hear so many say they are not interested. When young people tell me that, I tell them they need to get interested and that it is their civic responsibility to vote. Many teenagers who are too young to vote told me they wish they could because they'd like to vote for Barack Obama, so I told them they will get to when he runs for re-election in 2012! I talked with several middle aged folks who said they did not want to register but who had very strong opinions about what needs to happen. I just can't fathom why they won't vote. One man said his vote wouldn't matter, and I told him it might not have in the past but that it would this year, especially here in Virginia.
The fair is a good place to work on registrations as it does attract a large number of young people, and they do seem to tend toward Senator Obama. One young man told me he couldn't vote because he is a felon, but he was very knowledgeable about the process to have his voting rights restored and will apply for restoration in three years. At least he can vote for Obama next time. A young woman who was selling jewelry told me she was not a citizen but hoped to be in three more years. Two other vendors told me they were from Russia and another one was from South Africa. A county fair is more of an international event than I realized.
Our office plans to have people working on registration at the fair all week, so we should see some good results from this event. I read today that Howard Dean said he thought Sen. Obama could carry GA this fall if they could register a half million new voters. I wonder how many we need to register to carry Virginia.
I have some interesting experiences on Independence Day, and I think they might be of help to others involved in registering voters.
In the morning. I joined a group of Obama supporters in a morning parade. In the afternoon I worked at an information booth for two county Democratic Committees at a large downtown Fourth of July Festival. We were directly across a parking lot from the Republican booth, and they didn't seem to have a lot of visitors, but at ours there was heavy traffic from the start with people requesting Obama signs, buttons, and bumper stickers, so most of that material was gone pretty quickly. Some people came by specifically to ask how they could volunteer to help with the campaign. We invited folks to add their names and contact information to a list so they could receive email updates from the local committees. We also asked people if they needed to register to vote.
Toward the end of the day, a reporter from the local newspaper showed up and began asking me questions. She asked some good ones: "Have you personally convinced someone to vote for Barack Obama?" (yes, during the primary season I had) and "Why do you think so many people do not vote?" I told her that I wasn't completely sure, but that I thought some people chose not to vote because they didn't think it would matter if they did because nothing would change anyway. I went on to say that this year many people seem to believe that their vote really will mean something because plenty of people are voting either for the first time or for the first time in a long time - and they are voting for Barack Obama because they do believe he will make changes that will benefit them.
Her questions gave me good food for thought, and I decided I was going to be more assertive about convincing people to register to vote AND see if I could get some insight into why people don't vote. So, a young woman and man with a baby in a stroller came by, and I began to speak to them. I asked if they needed to register to vote, and she said no, she never had done that and didn't think she wanted to. I decided that I didn't want to just take no for an answer, so I remarked, "A newspaper reporter just asked me if I knew why people don't vote, and I said I really didn't know, so, if you would feel comfortable telling me, I would be interested to know why you haven't registered to vote and aren't interested in that." She replied, "I just never have done it." My response was, "Well, you are not alone. There are lots of people in our country who have never voted, but many of them have decided that they are going to vote this year, and I think this is a good year for you to think about voting. We have some outstanding candidates running in Virginia. Our former Governor Mark Warner is running for United States Senate. I don't know how it is at your house, but at mine, our money seems to be in short supply with everything costing more and more every week." (She nodded, and so did the young man, who had not said a word so far.) I continued, "Mark Warner is a businessman, and he understands about the economy. I believe he will be able to do something as a Senator to straighten out the mess our economy has become. And Barack Obama certainly knows what it is to live in a family without a lot of money. He was raised by a single mother after his father left them, so he understands what it is to be part of a regular family just trying to pay the bills." They nodded again, so I kept going. "How about if I show you a voter registration form so you can see how easy it is to register? Just because you register, you still don't have to vote if you don't want to, but if you go ahead and register, and then lateron , you decide you want to vote, you've already done the registration part and you'll be ready to roll!"
The woman said all right, so I got a form and began going over it line by line with them. When I got to the part that asks "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" the young man finally spoke. "Is that a problem?" he asked. "Not necessarily," I replied. "People who have committed a felony can have their voting rights restored once they have served their sentence, and I know for sure that our Gov. Tim Kaine has announced that his office will be giving high priority to restoring voting rights to people who have served their sentence because he believes, as do I, that if someone has completed their sentence, they should be allowed to vote." He nodded, so I decided to ask, "Would this be a concern for you?" and he answered that it would. At that point I called my daughter over, who knows more about restoration of rights than I do, and asked her to explain the process to him. She determined that his was a non-violent offense and that the requisite amount of time since the commission of the crime had occured. Then we hit a snag. We didn't have any restoration of rights forms. My daughter was able to give him the name of the person he should contact at the courthouse, but I really wished we had had the form available AND a notary public present to notarize a signature. I hope he will follow up on this. He said, "I don't care if they restore my gun rights because I don't like guns, but I want to vote."
I felt good about my interaction with this couple even though we weren't able to get them registered on the spot. I tried out some new approaches to interacting with people and did get positive response from them, and I learned that it would be good to have all the forms on hand plus someone to notarize. I said to my daughter, "For all we know, one of our workers standing right at the table could be a notary. We need to find that out for next time." Then it crossed my mind that I could investigate become a notary public myself. I have NO idea how one does that or what it entails,but I am going to find out.
