Yellow Cart Picture from Noise of Rain.
New voters in the making. Republished June 28, 2014 in GOT1V, originally from NoiseofRain' and Badscience innovative voter registration drive in 2011.
First of all, thank you for stopping by. This is the fourth in the GOTV series where we will discuss outdoor voting registration drives featuring the unique and creative voting registration cart that Noise of Rain and Badscience designed. I also want to express my appreciation to Eclectablog, Denise Velez-Oliver and the League of Women Voters for their contributions to the series. And big h/t to Lillith Gardner who has joined the GOTV group as an administrator and patiently walked me through some of the intricacies of starting a group and has a great suggestion to improve visibility.
So, important points to remember per Badscience:
1. Make sure you know the laws in your area. Especially considering all the changes in the last few years. The League of Women Voters is a good source as well as your county Democratic party. The link to League's tips on successful voter registration drives is below.
2. Be ready with voter reg forms, polling place locations, and absentee ballot information. Absentee voting may be a big help in overcoming the voter suppression efforts, but regulations vary from state to state, so please make sure that you know yours.
3. And this is useful to know. The cart has a battery powered lamp for night time registration. We used it for a recall petition drive outside of a public event. The lamp came in very handy. Table surfaces are very helpful for people to sign voter registration forms and as a place for people to gather. A cart makes it easy to take from place to place.
4. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. Below is the link to NoiseofRain's excellent diary about the registration event they produced a few years ago. Does this look like fun or what? Bet we all wish we could have been there!
http://www.dailykos.com/....
Action steps below the fold:
ACTION STEPS:
CARTOGRAPHY: Design your own outdoor registration event. Be creative, follow NoiseofRain and Badscience' excellent example: Try to get some local celebrities or politicians to show up, consider having music, games for the kids to play while their parents register, maybe some street performers nearby, a raffle or giveaways (make sure these are legal in your area, we don't need James O'Keefe showing up!).
VOLUNTEER: Contact your county Democratic party and volunteer to help with any registration drives they have. In my area they frequently have a table close to the Saturday Farmer's market, which is a very busy event.
REGISTER, REGISTER, REGISTER: Register if you haven't already, post the Rock the Vote link where you can especially in purple states, battleground Senate and gubenatorial races, younger voters pages...etc. http://www.rockthevote.com/...
Thx again. As I mentioned, we have started a group on the Kos called GOTV 2014. Please consider joining. I welcome suggestions, ideas, comments. And my proposed schedule until mid-September when I will focus on getting people to the polls is:
¡SÍ SE PUEDE! in early to mid-July: Focus on registering Hispanic voters. I will also run a link to a registration drive for Native Americans in the action section and one for Asian Americans if I can find one (I have an inquiry out). If anyone would like to diary about these groups, that would be great. The schedule I have set out is as much as I can take on, at least for now.
DIFFERENT BUT STILL ABLE: Late July . How to help the differently abled community register to vote and, in this case, get to the polls. I have made some inquiries, but would really appreciate referrals to anyone who would like to diary about this.
YOUNG, GREEN AND GAY. Mid August. Registering younger voters, the LGBT community and greenies. Anyone have an in with "Between Two Ferns"? (I can hope!). I plan to have this include information about college campus registration drives in the late summer and early fall.
SAVE THE SENATE: Just after labor day. Will feature key races and plan on calling the various campaigns to find out who has virtual phone banks.
GOVERNORS GO BLUE: Also early September Discussion and links to key Governor's races around the country. And then as mentioned whatever we can do to get souls to the polls, soles to the polls, flounders (we are after all the only real hope for the environment!), any legitimate citizen who can vote. Will plan on focusing on women, African Americans, Hispanics and young folks. Below is a link to the last diary which also includes the first two and to the League of Women Voters tips for voter registration drives.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.lwv.org/...
Thx again and ONWARD. Again, I apologize about the duplicate diaries. I just don't know what happened and as noted in the comments, deleted the other one, then it came back! Have a great weekend and thx for stopping by.