My wife and I did something today we will never forget (our first voter registration drive). We are both big Obama supporters, but we are not as passionate about politics as many of you (though I am becoming more passionate by the day). Well, as many of you know, this weekend Obama kicked off his national voter registration drive, and we signed up to do this in downtown Atlanta.
We went in having no idea what this actually meant - would we be sitting at a desk, what would we specifically be doing, how many people would be there, etc. Ultimately, we found out we would actually be walking around with voter registration cards and a small paper sign that said "Register to Vote Here". We're a bit shy when it comes to talk to strangers, so it was a bit scary of a thought. But it was a team of 5 of us, only 1 of the 5 who had ever done this before, so it was also very exciting to see how we would do.
Well, we spent about 3 hours walking around, first at Centennial Park, then at the Georgia Dome where Georgia State was having its Graduation, then onto the MARTA (our local train system) for our finale. Two of us left early, but the other 3 of us estimate we got about 30 people signed up and another 15 or 20 folks who took blank forms to send in on their own.
We were told that the end result was that about 150 volunteers led to about 800 newly registered voters. The folks running this seemed new to this, so they were figuring this out on the fly and did not have a really good estimate what to expect. This was a learning process for many of us, and part of the goal was to learn for the next groups who will be doing this over the next several weeks.
Some interesting things we learned doing this:
1) The enthusiasm for this election was incredible. So many people were already registered, and when we asked, many would say "You bet 'ya." and stuff like that with very clear joy in their voices. Several complimented us for what we were doing, and we signed up about a dozen people to volunteer in the future.
- Since you can't ask people their affiliation, it became very obvious how valuable it was to be at a place where more than 80% of the people there were clearly for Obama. We live in a Republican heavy part of town, so you don't want to be doing this near our house...
- You are limited to doing this in public places. I mention this because it leads to point number 4...
- The college graduation and MARTA were great places to do this. Why? They were almost all Obama fans and they wanted to vote for him. And, at the college, the parents were proud of their kids who were registering to vote.
I strongly recommend the Obama camp make a concerted effort to target high school and college graduation ceremonies for this type of effort. I realize it might be kind of strange to do this type of thing at night, so maybe there is something better, but it was obvious to me that this was incredibly fertile ground for new Obama supporters. The kids are Obama fans, and with their good moods (having just graduated) and their proud parents, they seemed very enthusiastic to register if they already hadn't. And, also, some kids we met did not realize they were legal to register if they were 17 now but would be 18 by October (as is the case for many high school seniors).
- Can't wear Obama clothes or in any way talk about political stuff. Because of where we were, EVERYBODY knew we were for Obama, and many engaged us, mostly in our favor, but a few indicating they were McCain voters. We all wanted to talk to the Obama fans, but we mostly resisted.
- From our perspective, there seemed to be a lot of potential to hand voter registration forms to folks on the MARTA and let them complete them at home, but we were told at the end that the preference is for the completed forms so that they can create voter contact lists from the information. We didn't even think of that until they told us.
We have 2 young children, so we have to get a babysitter anytime we want to do something like this. However, we had a tremendous time doing this, and definitely plan to do it again. I told my wife the next time I do this, I want to go to Macon (90 minutes away) where we can support both Obama and the congressmen in GA-8. It's a shame to me that Georgia is such a long shot for Obama and our senate candidate, though I must say that does not detract from the incredible time we had meeting all these great people!
I know many of you have done this type of thing many times, and I must congradulate you for it.
Update 1: I wrote to Obama's web site with the suggestion that they target high school and college graduations, and I also sent this same request to the leader of our registration drive. Thanks for the encouragement!
I already got the auto-response e-mail back from the campaign (no surprise of course), so if anyone has good contacts, I welcome you forwarding this suggestion.
Update 2: We got told today that Atlanta had 1,000 new voters registered. NYC was first with about 1,400, and Atlanta was second, so we have to be quite proud. We didn't get totals for the country, but there were 120 events, so you've got to think there were 25k to 50k at least.
Another event is scheduled in Atlanta this Saturday, so if this is similar around the country for the rest of the election season, you've got to believe we have a real chance to register millions of new voters! This is awesome!