We just got back from 5 hours of registering voters and handing out our homemade literature about Bernie Sanders. My husband has done this before but it was my first time tabling. It turned out to be pretty easy and fun.
We hosted one of the 3500 organizing meetings a week ago last Wednesday. Despite my inadequate amplification equipment for Bernie's talk, our impromptu group of 15 strangers had an enthusiastic meeting.
Our group decided to have monthly meetings starting the first Wednesday in September to organize tabling and other activities in the Chelsea neighborhood of NYC. One woman volunteered to get information on voter registration deadlines. She got back to us the next day to let us know that any voter already registered in New York State but not enrolled in the Democratic Party would need to file an amended return by October 9 of this year in order to vote in the Democratic primary election next spring. We realized that we couldn't wait until September and called a follow-up meeting this past Wednesday, at which we decided to put up a voter registration table starting today. When one member of the group reminded us that this was the second of three Summer Streets Saturdays, when big crowds would gather for free food by Madison Square Park, we decided to set up there, even though it is a little outside of Chelsea.
Another member of our group volunteered to get the voter registration forms from the Board of Elections. She had to go twice because the first time they gave here 600 Spanish language forms instead of 500 English and 100 Spanish. Yet another member of the group drafted a flyer, which my husband edited down to one page on Friday night. A friend who had not heard of Bernie Sanders lent us her card table and we assembled our two remaining Bernie posters, signup sheets, buttons, stickers and some homemade signs.
This morning I started shortly after 8:00 a.m. and was soon joined by my husband and another volunteer. A member of the group was actually working at one of the Summer Streets booths and came over a few times with food and beverages. We talked to a lot of voters who were already registered Democrats, gave them literature and told them to warn their Green, Working Families and undeclared friends to enroll in the Democratic Party in the next two months. One registered voter said he believed in the Second Amendment and would not vote for Hillary but was comfortable with Sanders' stated position. We got completed registration forms from 14 unregistered but eligible voters, and gave out another five or six registration forms to people who were going to give it a little more thought before registering as Democrats, including one traditional Republican and one Rand style Republican, both of whom like Sanders. One early middle aged man who filled out the form for us to file told us that he had never yet voted but that Bernie's positions had convinced him to register and vote.
At this level, everything is an anecdote, but I'm beginning to see how Sanders has historically won by attracting Republicans and conservatives and expanding the pool of active voters. We plan to keep up the effort weekly, hopefully expanding our group of volunteers and the hours of tabling. It should be an interesting autumn.