early voting

Update: Here's another take from Stella, an organizer with Swing Semester:

Ohioans are very skeptical of voting. In 04 many of their votes were not counted. I know all of these things are designed to help with that. But in their minds it is harder to convince people to vote early. In the end it is still an absentee ballot…

I personally did register before the deadline. And I could have gone and voted early but chose not to. I want to vote on election day. As many other democrats do. While we were at the vp debate watch party last week the Obama campaign was trying to get "die hard" dems to vote early… And they were all saying no… I think that we are all so scared that someone is trying to take our vote away. And with all of the lawsuits that were filed leading up to golden week it created more tension around it. I think in the end we will get them to vote it is just going to be harder to get them to vote early…

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The AP is running a story reporting low turnout in Ohio during early voting. The numbers:

As of Monday evening with polling sites still open, projections were that about 4,000 to 5,000 voters in the state's four largest counties would have taken advantage of the policy, which survived multiple court challenges.

Elections officials were surprised by the low turnout.

"With all the hoopla we were anticipating a whole lot more," said Steve Harsman, the elections director in Montgomery County, home to Dayton.

Overall, between 20,000 and 25,000 people were expected to have voted early in person in the four counties, beginning Sept. 30. The four counties include the state's largest urban areas — Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and Dayton — and the focal points of campaign get-out-the-vote efforts.

The Columbus Dispatch had more specific youth numbers to add to this equation:

Of the 9,280 people who had cast absentee ballots in person as of Monday, 3 percent were registered Republicans and 39 percent were Democrats, records show. The rest were unaffiliated.

Of the 2,097 people who also registered to vote before casting an absentee ballot in Franklin County, two-thirds were younger than 34 and nearly 80 percent were from Columbus.

At first blush, that's disappointing news. Not the least because the Obama campaign and independent youth organizers were pushing early voting in the state. I confess that I was a little shocked when I read the story until I talked to Tony Cani, the Political Director of the Young Democrats. Here's what Tony had to say about the situation on the ground:

I really don't think this is that big of a surprise. There is only one voting site per county open - this isn't like early voting in many other states that allows you go to a number of community polling places to cast a ballot.

So, for example, in Franklin County the polling place is in downtown Columbus, an area that has very few residents and has a very high vacancy rate even for businesses. Why would someone schlep down there to vote? It isn't' really easier or more convenient. This takes away the primary argument organizers use to get people to vote early.

I didn't realize that there were so few polling locations. That's certainly a huge obstacle to face in scaling up participation into significant numbers. It seems like those promoting early voting in the state did a poor job at managing expectations here. Though, to be honest, they were in a bit of a Catch-22. They had to talk up the potential of early voting in order to recruit volunteers and drum up interest among potential voters, but there just wasn't enough time to really make it work.

This is a pretty substance-heavy Quick Hits. Any one of the items here should merit a full blog post. There's just not enough time, damn it! Not enough time . . .

• CNN Money has an almost great segment on how the economic downturn may be driving young voters to the polls. My only quibble - in the final line the reporter claims that in the past "young people were eager to register, but not to vote." That's just not true. 80% of registered young voters actually cast a ballot on election day. Registration is the problem, not turnout. Or, as I've been saying - higher youth turnout is not about curing apathy but increasing access. (h/t Chris Kennedy of Rock the Vote)

• In the wake of GOP voter suppression efforts that have ensnared young people and veterans in Montana, Forward Montana has launched Montana Voter Suppression (.org), a website to track, report, and prevent voter suppression efforts in the state. Earlier today, the group also held a protest in front of the office of MT Rep Dennis Rehberg's office. Rehberg's chief of staff, Erik Iverson, is the Chair of Montana GOP, the group behind the voter challenges.
• Speaking of voter suppression, Nancy Scola and Allison Fine have a spectacular post over at Tech President detailing how Twitter could be used as an election protection tool.
• GQRR has a new poll out, this time of women. The results show that unmarried women, including many young women, are the key to Obama's success among that demographic. Unmarried women are supporting Obama 62 - 33%. So much for the "Palin Effect."

• In Kansas, Jim Slattery is embarking on a campus tour to drum up youth support for his Senate campaign. All down-ballot candidates should consider this if they want to ride the youth wave to its fullest. As much as we'd like to think they do, Obama's coattail don't necessarily extend all the way down the ballot.
• Veterans group IAVA issued it's congressional score card today, and John McCain earned a big fat D. The Disabled Veterans of American didn't score him much better, giving the Senator a 20% rating. So much for supporting the troops.

• Early voting begins today in Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia. If that's where you live, stop reading this and go vote!
• Next week is Ohio's "Golden Week," when you can register to vote and cast your ballot on the same day. If you want to go help out in the state next week, volunteer here.
• The National Conference on Citizenship released its Third Civic Health Index today. They also held their annual conference today (which I was supposed to attend - apologies to all for not making it down). I'll have more later, but for now, you can read another blogger's take here.
• 29-year-old Nate Willems, also a blogger, is running for State Senate in Iowa. Best of luck, Nate, and we'd love to have you here anytime to blog about the experience.
• Turns out that email is not a dying medium among today's youth afterall. (Warning, this link will take you to the most obnoxious sign-up process in history. Go at your own risk).
• Trying to wrap your head around this economic mess we now find ourselves in? Go read this article in The Nation.
• FiveThirtyEight.com notes that some folks are getting their feathers ruffled as the Obama campaign directs funds away from swag like lawn signs towards other things like field work. Oh, the horror! Hey, sounds right to me.
• Michael Moore is encouraging everyone to download his new movie, "Slacker Uprising," about his tour of colleges and universities in 2004. Moore will by live blogging on Daily Kos tonight at 11pm Eastern.
• The Swing Semester Syllabus is now online.
• The Daily Pennsylvanian has an excellent interview with Howard Dean about the role of young people in this election and remaking the Democratic Party.
• P. Diddy may be off on the sidelines, uploading crazy-ass YouTube videos every week, but celebrity-driven politics is bigger than ever. Ad Week has the skinny.
• New York State College Dems are gearing up for the election. So are a lot of College Dem chapters, but NYS keeps popping up in my Google Alerts and on blogs. They've got a much larger online footprint than other College Dem chapters, which is a good thing. That's how you get noticed. More chapters should be as active within the blogosphere.
• This is funny. A Republican candidate is crying foul over her loss in a recent primary. The crime? Her opponent registered and GOTV'd too many College Republicans. I'm sure there's a joke about eating your young in there . . .

Bumped. --Mike

I was watching the Obama speech with friends the other night...

And someone said: "Let's all go to Ohio."

By many measures, Ohio's 20 electoral votes are the clearest path to victory in 2008. Obama needs 18 more electoral votes than Kerry won in 2004. There are two other likely scenarios to win: Colorado (9) plus New Mexico (5) plus Iowa (7) for a total of 21. Or Virginia (13) plus Iowa plus New Mexico for 25. I don't mean to oversimplify here --there are lot of important states and lots of ways to win. But none is more likely than Ohio.

Next thing I knew, we had created a program called Vote Today Ohio to turn out 10,000 new and unlikely voters during Ohio's new "Golden Week" when new voters can register AND vote on the same day.

Thanks to our excellent new Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, Ohio recently changed its voting laws in a way that creates a 7 day window, from Sept 30 - Oct 6, where Ohio residents can register and vote early. It's the best GOTV opportunity ever created --like having seven days of Election Day Registration a month before the election.

The only problem is getting people to the polls. Unfortunately each of Ohio's 88 counties only has ONE polling place during the early voting period. So we need lots of people to take people to the polls.

Our goal with Vote Today Ohio is to recruit 100 new Ohio volunteers, and bring 100 in from out of state to bank 10,000 additional progressive votes. So far we have 30+ volunteers. We're raising money to rent vans and finding housing. Our efforts will be closely coordinated with America Votes and local progressive field organizations.

It's all hands on deck time --this election is going to be squeaky close. In 2004, Kerry lost Ohio by only 2% (119,000 votes amid massive voter suppression and dirty tricks). Meanwhile 2.3 million registered Ohioans did not cast a ballot!!

If we are able to get even 10% more progressive Ohioans to vote in 2008, Obama will likely win Ohio --and the election. We need thousands of people to help out --during Golden Vote week or whenever you're free.

Please report immediately to your nearest battleground state.

If you want to come to Ohio, write me, tell me who you are, when you want to go, and I'll hook you up: billywimsatt [at] gmail [dot] com

Here's a few resources that I found lately. They've been gathering dust in my browser since Denver. Best get them all out now before I forget or mistakenly close the tabs:

• 538.com has a great piece about early voting/vote by mail, including a list of when early voting begins in the battleground states.
• Go Vote Absentee will help you do just that.
• The Harvard Institute of Politics has their own absentee ballot guide, including a fancy flash-map interface.
• Travel For Change looks like it's an Obama-centric knock-off of Swing Semester/Driving Votes.

Today's Daily Dispatch from the Progressive States Network focuses on how states can lower barriers to participation and increase turnout in elections. It's a great resource on election day registration, mail-in registration, and other proven ways that states can increase citizen engagement.

I've been remiss in posting about this. As reported at the Houston Chronicle and Burnt Orange Report, earlier today, over 2,000 students from Prairie View A&M marched 7 miles from campus to the county courthouse to both cast an early ballot in the Texas primary and protest student disenfranchisement in Waller county.

The story is this - in January the county made a decision to radically reduce the number of early polling locations in the county to one. This was not a surprise. The county has a long history of voter suppression of students and people of color. This is from an email I received earlier:

• Supreme Court case that ruled against the county in 1979 where students at PVAMU were forced to take a questionnaire about personal questions in order to vote in Waller.
• In 1993 19 students were indited (charges were later dropped) for voter fraud as they lead massive voters registrations efforts on the campus of PVAMU.
• In 2004 the District Attorney told the students that they would be fined or could face jail time if they registered to vote in Waller County. The Attorney General of Texas intervened and the students were able to register.
• In 2006 Black Youth Vote!, The PVAMU student government association and a local county judge lead a registration effort to register hundreds of students on the campus and none of those students were on the rolls to vote for the mid-term elections. Apparently there was a "scandal" in the elections office and the matter was under investigation by the same office (district attorney's office) that told the students that they could not vote two years earlier.
• During the summer of 2007 Judge Dewayne Charleston had pledged to walk from PV to Austin in protest of the non-response from the Office of the Attorney General. This lead to roughly 300 students names (from the stack that was never put on the rolls in 2006) to be placed on the voting rolls in Waller county.
• Now (2008), the County is proposing to close all the early voting locations in the city of Prairie View with the university alone having over 8000 students and PVAMU being the largest employer in the county.
• The new proposal llocations for 3 days (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) are still inadequate because students are not in town on weekends and it seems like a band aid to a SERIOUS problem with CONSISTENT student voter disenfranchisement in Waller and there has to be an outside intervention to protect the integrity of the elections for the students.

The response has been building for a while. The Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights Under Law took up the case on behalf of the students, the Obama campaign also supported the students - writing the Department of Justice on their behalf, registering about 3,000 young voters in the area, and providing water for the march.

The county gave in somewhat once the students announced today's march, though many were unsatisfied with their response. The county agreed to open three extra - and temporary - early voting locations over the weekend, but many students are away from school from Friday through Sunday, making this a less than adequate response on their part.

From a letter written by LCCR to the Department of Justice:

Waller County proposes temporary early polling sites in three locations within the county (Hockley, Pairie View, and Brookshire) for a two-day period, February 22 - 23, 2008. With regard to Prairie View, this two-day period would provide the students at Prairie View A & M University with a diminished opportunity to vote. Rather than conduct voting at the temporary voting site in Prairie View during the week, as has been done in the past, the County has proposed voting there on Friday and Saturday, two days when we have been told by members of the community that the students generally leave campus. The fact that this change was proposed without the input of the minority community in Prairie View combined with the history of voting discrimination within the county, gives the impression that the County is willfully trying to minimize, to the extent possible, the opportunity for the Prairie View students to vote; an action taht would be in line with past attempts to deter students from voting.

Bottom line - the students won some concessions, and today's turnout was impressive, but voter suppression is still happening. The Texas primary is on Tuesday March 4th. Early voting in the state began today.