My Indivisible group did some voter registration yesterday in Columbus, Ohio, trying out a roadside corner BBQ run by a small Baptist church in the South Linden neighborhood . The demographics of the neighborhood are perhaps 90%+ black, and 90%+ Democratic among those who vote. This was a formerly red-lined neighborhood, which would be covered by Sen. Kamala Harris’ $100 billion mortgage grant proposal—not sure how widely known that proposal is, just FYI.
The BBQ is run sporadically on Fridays by Loving Charity Baptist Church and the family of Pastor Daniel Gore. Here’s our VR stand next to Pastor Dan setting up. He has been running the BBQ, called The Bus Stop, for 20 years. The tents yesterday served to protect against the brutal heat.
Some street signs:
The centennial of women’s suffrage is next year, which is also the 200th anniversary of Susan B. Anthony’s birth.
We tried a little fun thing this time: place a buckeye for the candidate of your choice (sorry, had to pick just six candidates):
A group of young people came by early, distributing flyers for a jazz concert Saturday in a local park:
Only one of them was of voting age (19) and he registered for the first time! They all were allowed to cast a vote in the Buckeye Poll:
Here are the initial returns:
Interesting.
Here’s the BBQ menu:
As I said, the day was brutally hot, and so the BBQ wrapped up early, but we got 8 voter registrations:
Kamala broke into the lead quickly:
Final tally at 4pm:
There were 15 buckeyes cast:
Harris 11 (73%), Booker 2 (13%), Biden 1 (7%), Sanders 1 (7%), Warren 0, Trump 0.
All voters but two were black. One woman looked at the photo of Harris and someone else mentioned she is a woman of color. The woman said “is she black?” I said, “yes, Indian and Jamaican.” She said, “oh, mixed” and placed a buckeye for Harris.
Two white guys pulled up in a truck hauling a trailer of landscaping equipment. The seemed like good old boys not exactly in the progressive wheelhouse. On the way to the food stand the younger one said “how long does this take” and when I said just a minute, he stopped to register. The older one said, “I can’t vote, I’m a felon.” That is a common misconception among Ohio ex-felons. Anyone (practically) not currently in jail in Ohio can vote, but it seems the lion’s share of ex-felons think they can’t. When I explained that he could in fact register and vote, he still shrugged and said never mind, and went to get BBQ. Walking back I saw him eyeing the sign again and I said, “second thoughts?” And he said, what the hell and registered. Then I asked both of them if they wanted to do the poll. The ex-felon picked up a buckeye and tossed it into the Trump container, but snatched it out again as it was still rattling around. I think he was messing with me as he smiled. Then he pointed to Harris and said “is she a Democrat” and when I said yes, he selected her. I joked, “as an ex-felon, you might not like that she is a former prosecutor, but she is sharp.” He laughed. The younger guy said, “I don’t like Trump,” and selected Bernie Sanders.