Tomorrow is the last day for voters to register before the Nov. 2 election and things were pretty crazy at Dem. HQ today. We had more new registrants than any other day so far and ran out of forms twice. Everyone says that is great news, and it is, but it leaves you frazzled at the end of the day. However, a lady who lives in my area needed some bumper stickers and 3 voter registration forms, so I took them over to her place tonight.
I was inspired by the encounter and I would like to share it with all of you. I have tried to use her words as much as possible.
Yesterday, another volunteer took some yard signs to her, so I had an idea what to expect. She lives in a very modest rural area in a neighborhood of trailer homes. She is elderly, very conservatively dressed, with the sort of clothing and hair style that I associate with religious fundamentalists, usually Republican. Her home is spotless, and she takes care of the yard herself. She is very well versed on the issues, watches CNN some, but more MSNBC, never Fox. She likes Aaron Brown, Chris Mathews, and Keith Olberman, and doesn't have a computer although her grandchildren use one. She knows about the Doelfur report and about the CIA report on 9/11 that is being suppressed (CNN?). "She is sorry that she got such a late start," she tells me more than once. She is turning her neighborhood blue, in a way that maybe only little old Southern ladies can. I noticed the Kerry signs in yards near her home. Turns out they weren't there 2 days ago. She has lived here all her life, has children, grandchildren, siblings, a parent, school friends and church friends (yes, religion is important to her) living nearby. She is asking all of them if she can put a sign in their yards. Some have said "I just can't let you do that." She tells them "Well, I know you're a Bush man." Many are saying yes.
She is also asking if they are registered to vote. If they don't know for sure, or she thinks they don't know, she calls us to check them against the voter list. So, she needs more forms. The six I originally brought (I had some extras) with the bumper stickers will not be enough for her relatives and neighbors, so I return home to print her a dozen. Before we can get back to her house, she has convinced her next door neighbors to fill out two of them. For country of residence, they have written "America," which I think will be ok even though all the people I have been dealing with write "USA." Some of the others will go to work with a friend in the morning, she will take some to relatives and other close neighbors (she doesn't drive much, herself) tomorrow. If all goes well, I will go back and pick them up in the afternoon and they will be turned in before the deadline. Again, she is sorry she got such a late start.
What is motivating this lady to work so hard to register people and convince them to vote for John Kerry? She is concerned for the direction of the country and for her grandchildren's future and for the loss of freedom through the Patriot Act. She is convinced that John Kerry is a "very intelligent man." Health care and prescription drug costs are important to her, because she is on a fixed income and not quite old enough for Medicare. The few dollars she got back from the tax cut don't compare to the increases in her insurance premiums. She is also terribly concerned about fraud via electronic voting without a paper trail, especially in Florida. She doesn't think it's right that Martha Stewart is in prison and Ken Lay isn't. Many people in her situation have similar concerns, but what really surprised me was what she said about George Bush: "I don't think he takes his religion very seriously. No one who lies the way he has lied is really being a Christian. That is against the commandments. He just isn't serious about being a Christian and if he will lie about that, he will lie about anything."
I don't think she was ever actually a Republican, because she is glad Bill Clinton is going to be campaigning for Kerry on Monday. She is probably of the old style Democratic party that many of us assumed was swept away by the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. I don't think she has been politically active for years, if ever, but she is now. She is very sorry she got such a late start, but she is doing everything she can to see that John Kerry is our next president. I don't know anything about little old ladies elsewhere, but in the South there is no one who can cajole and shame and armtwist and gently blackmail like they can. They are a force to be reckoned with, and if George Bush is losing them it is wonderful news for John Kerry and all the rest of us here at DailyKos.
The down side to this story is that she is getting a late start, and the local organization has to take a lot of the blame for that. We assumed that those poor, rural, white areas were mostly Bush territory and our outreach efforts were not all they might have been. We were also out of yard signs, so she had to wait a few days and didn't learn that she could give her neighbors voter registration forms (avoiding a trip to the courthouse) until yesterday. On the other hand, many thanks to the great volunteer yesterday who told her about the registration process and about the deadline. Better a late start than no start at all. She will be responsible for registering at least 2 and maybe 8 or 10 voters, and I have no doubt that she will also get them out on Nov. 2 to vote for Kerry.
This woman lives in America and that is a little bit different than just living in the USA. I grew up in that America in the South and could never have imagined Abu Ghraib or having my library records checked by the FBI. I want to live there again, and hope I will get the chance. More power to the little old ladies.