QUESTION - Does the phrase
'voter registration' help or hinder current efforts by the Democratic Party?
ANALYSIS - Voter equality is a core value that The Bill of Rights guarantees and Democrats champion. At the time of the Voting Rights Act (1965), 'voter registration' was a rallying cry of grassroots organizers, an urgent need of the American public, and a key to Dem electoral success. While voter equality is still an urgent need, 'voting' and 'voters' has been muddied by two election losses and the Iraq War. 'Voting' now evokes questions of 'fraud' and 'intimidation' in the the so-called swing states, and 'voting' brings to mind images of Iraqis with ink-stained fingers. Neither of these issues advance Democratic Party efforts. Moreover, the urgent issue for Democrats in '04 was not 'voter registration,' but 'voter motivation.'
RECOMMENDATION - Democrats could be more effective if they switch their approach to voting from 'registration' ("Is a voter's name on the Democratic list?") to 'inspiration' ("Have Democratic ideas inspired a voter to stand with us?").
Frameshop is open...
Proud Democratic Heritage
The rallying cry of 'voter registration' is a noble part of the Democratic Party. It is a phrase that connects party activists, today, to the ideas of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. For anyone who has lost the sense of this connection, consider this
1957 speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.:
All types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic traditions and its is democracy turned upside down.
So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind -- it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact -- I can only submit to the edict of others.
So our most urgent request to the president of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote. Give us the ballot and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights. Give us the ballot and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the southern states and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence. Give us the ballot and we will transform the salient misdeeds of blood-thirsty mobs into calculated good deeds of orderly citizens. Give us the ballot and we will fill our legislative halls with men of good will, and send to the sacred halls of Congressmen who will not sign a Southern Manifesto, because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice. Give us the ballot and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will "do justly and love mercy," and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the divine.
The refrain of "give us the ballot" is both a rallying cry and a description of an action. That was the power of the 'voter registration' drives of the Civil rights of the movement. Having the right--that was the campaign.
Clearly, the promise of those campaigns has not been fully realized. There are still deep, deep problems in our voting system, including outright efforts to bar voters from exercising their right and system problems that prevent the full enactment of a national vote. The fiasco in Florida and the outrage in Ohio confirmed that the struggle to 'give us the ballot' was not over and should not ever be devalued or ignored.
And yet, the Democratic Party now finds itself with a distinctly different issue than Constitutional reform.
Try this exercise: Imagine you are party organizer responsible for getting out the vote in one Midwestern district. Amazingly, you have registered twice the number of voters necessary to beat the GOP candidate. Is this enough? Are you satisfied that you have achieved your goal?
Perhaps ten years ago, most of us would have been satisfied with this goal. Such a huge percentage margin would be enough to guarantee electoral victory. But today....today we would probably all be very nervous. We probably have a recurrent anxiety of the order, "Yeah, they're registered. Great. But are they going to vote?"
Voter Motivation
Why doesn't 'voter registration' inspire us to have confidence in electoral victory anymore? Undoubtedly, part of the problem is almost a decade of questions about voter fraud in our presidential elections.
The closeness of the '04 and '08 national votes brought about a series of technical victories in an arena typically marked by clear numeric outcomes.
Whether or not Americans agree that President Bush won or lost, all would concede that the nature of the elections has changed how people feel about election outcomes.
But there is something else that has happened in the past few months. The inspiration in the act of voting for the first time--that feeling has pretty much left the United States. We are no longer a nation where people are enjoying the right to vote for the first time. Sure, there are many young people are first-time voters--more and and more each year. Sean Combes' effort to get out the vote amongst younger Americans was based precisely on this group of first-time voters.
But the great period of Constitutional reform--that swung the door wide-open for all Americans and removes barriers of voter equality--this era is now something familiar to us.
The image of voter registration that inspires Americans, today, is the image of an Iraqi holding up a purple-stained finger.
And let's face it: it was inspiring to see all those purple fingers.
Sure, the Iraq election was full of problems. Sure, the election did little to stem the tide of death and destruction. Sure, the election was just symbolic of an electoral system that has yet to be determined. Sure, the election in Iraq was timed to coincide with Bush's State of the Union Address. Sure, the Iraq War has been the site of a brutal policy of torture by the Bush White House. Sure, sure, sure.
But the purple-fingers are still inspiring. I can't imagine there are very many Americans who see a photo of an Iraqi with a purple-stained finger and are not somehow moved. The fact is, we can be angry about the Iraq War and still be moved by the purple-fingers, and that is exactly what has happened.
These images have had a profound impact on how Americans think about voting rights. More than anyone expected, this very visible voting experiment in Iraq has re-oriented Americans to think about voting rights as something we export abroad, and to stop seeing voting rights as something we struggle for at home.
Most Americans now think something like this when it comes to voting: OK, our system has problems, but at least we have the vote. I mean, look at the Iraqis! They're voting for the first time. It's inspiring.
Lists vs. People
The key to this transformation has less to do with the actual election process in Iraq than with the frame invoked by the images and GOP speeches about Iraq.
The Bush campaign to sell the Iraqi elections to the American public was focused on humanizing the vote. That's right, the Iraqi election followed the metaphor [a vote] is [a person]. Just think about this for a second. Does anyone know who won the election in Iraq? I sure don't. The point was not the numbers. The goal of the Bush White House was to get the American people to think about the vote in Iraq as a human struggle. And it worked.
'Registration,' by contrast is not a humanizing metaphor. When Democrats use the phrase 'voter registration,' it evokes a metaphor of [a vote] is [a name on a list]. This is true, but it's not inspirational.
Remember that the 'voter registration' drives led by John Lewis or Martin Luther King, Jr.--these were based around images of Democratic activists marching together, standing with people, being beaten by the police. They were very humanizing images. And they were inspirational. They worked.
It is shocking, but true, that the GOP is now the party that talks about votes in human terms, while the Democrats talk about votes in statistical terms. This has to change.
Voter Inspiration Drive
Inspiring Americans on the subject of voting means talking about voting in human terms.
How can this be accomplished?
The phrase "give us the ballot" provides one possible answer.
The power in the phrase "give us the ballot" lies in the humanizing image it evokes. "Give us the ballot" brings to mind an image of a hand extending out with a piece of paper that is then clutched by another hand. It is an image of people interacting with people, not names being written on a list.
Voting is a hand extending out to take a ballot.
Speaking in terms of core values is the second part of the equation.
Very often when Democrats speak about voting, they marvel at the problem of Americans 'voting against their own economic self-interest." But when they turn to the campaign of getting people to vote for Democrats, they leave this topic aside.
Democrats can inspire people to vote by humanizing the act of voting and by talking about the core values of opportunity and economic fairness.
During the '04 campaign, John Edwards was a master at humanizing Democratic core values, but he stopped short of connecting them to the act of voting. If Edwards had talked about Democratic core values and voting in humanistic terms, it might have sounded something like this:
Take this Ballot, Stand with the Democrats
Democrats believe in opportunity and prosperity for all.
If you're sitting in your kitchen worrying about losing your job: take this ballot, stand with the Democrats.
If your child is sick and you're worried about paying your medical bills: take this ballot, stand with the Democrats.
If you work hard and play by the rules, but now worry about being left alone to face the risks of retirement: take this ballot, stand with the Democrats.
If believe in American leadership, but worry about the safety of our soldiers: take this ballot, stand with the Democrats.
If you believe that America is strongest when stand together, and weakest when we are forced to stand alone: take this ballot, stand with the Democrats.
A perfect campaign? Hardly. But it's a start. And the more Democrats reach for 'voter inspiration' instead of just 'voter registration,' the closer we will come to finding the best way to connect with the public.
How do we inspire? What will inspiration look like? What will it sound like?
It's time to brainstorm...