Here I am, busting my butt to register new voters every day at the office-- got 3 on Monday-- and I discover there's this HUGE group of folks nobody seems to be reaching out to. At least if a man I registered today is telling me the truth, the number of Pacific Islanders, including Samoan and Tongan Americans, of which there are known to be about 874,000(2000 census), who are unregistered is ENORMOUS !
I offer the opportunity to register to all my US citizen clients on a daily basis, but sometimes I fill in for colleagues who are on vacation or ill. Today was one of those days, so I ended up talking to folks I had never met before.
One of them was a Samoan American. He is in his 40's and has NEVER registered to vote. When I asked him why not, he told me that his fellow Samoans were "afraid to vote." No one in his family was registered.
When I asked him why, it seemed to come from a lack of education on the issues and the candidates, and a sense that they didn't know enough about how to vote, and even the most basic things like how or where to register!
He told me that, even though the local Samoan radio station encouraged voting, it didn't tell them how to go about doing so.
I gave him my phone number and promised him that, if he wanted, I would make sure someone came to his community to register voters this very weekend. He said he would talk to his pastor about welcoming a non-partisan voter registration team to their church-- this was his idea-- and I told him to have the pastor call me and we would coordinate.
Now, I don't live near the part of Los Angeles County where this community is concentrated, but I am more than willing to donate as much time and gas as it takes to get this done. However, it seemed more efficient to me to call some folks who should be taking care of business where these citizens are concerned. So I called an appropriate voter outreach group and asked them what was up with the fact that so many of their logical constituency had not been contacted. The person with whom I talked promised to connect me to someone who will get this organized.
I promise to update with how this goes, but I suspect that there will be dozens if not hundreds of new voters who will join the Democratic Party in the near future. You see, this man didn't seem to know that Barack Obama was raised in Hawai'i. But you could see the light in his eyes when he realized somebody who could understand his issues might soon be in the White House.