I'm sitting here in a non-swing state, wondering how best to help GOTV efforts. As I was looking at registration and voting regulations for various states, I saw that in several states, one thing that can qualify you to vote absentee is working a required shift during polling hours on election day.
This got me thinking about what the real, practical obstacles to voting are for many people, and how we might overcome them. I don't know if others are working on any of these ideas, but here we go...
Child care. In Alabama (maybe elsewhere, I didn't get far down the list of states) the required shift has to be 10 hours or more. (Of course, you can't require someone to work a 10-hour shift under current labor laws as far as I know, but that's a different issue.) Few people work a required 10-hour shift, but many people have commutes and drop-off/pick-up times for child care that stretch their work day out an hour or two on either end. Might there be a movement to (a) provide free volunteer child care on election day and/or (b) encourage civic minded child-care providers to extend their hours on Nov. 2 so parents can vote?
Employers. Can there be a public campaign to ask businesses to treat Election Day as a holiday or offer time off to employees to vote? There are businesses that do this, but if some businesses did it very publicly with much fanfare, might it pressure other businesses to go along?
Other services. In the same vein, might other businesses that provide needed services (banks, grocery stores, anywhere else you might have to run to after work) be encouraged and/or pressured to be open late or offer special services they don't ordinarily offer (delivery, etc.) on Election Day to make it easier for people to vote?
I'm writing this stream of consciousness... after going through this exercise, it looks like it can be summed up as one campaign, a Support Voting campaign based on an appeal to civic duty, public spirit, etc. I think it might catch on, even among different factions, because there are some things most people in this polarized electorate actually agree on:
- the race is very close
- the election is very important
- no one wants to look unpatriotic in the current political climate.
And we on the left know that anything that gets out the vote among the harried working class helps Kerry. We don't have to talk about that.
I'm picturing a very focused, one-note idea, like a red-white-and-blue poster in the window:
"This business SUPPORTS VOTING"
If a critical mass were reached, no business would want to be the only one on the block without one. It would also leave it up to individual businesses to get creative about HOW they support voting. A taxi company giving rides to the polls? A happy hour special from the corner bar if you're wearing your "I Voted!" button? Who knows?
The nice thing about this is does several things: solve real practical problems people have on election day, bring some of those problems into the public awareness, create a general sense of obligation about voting that may encourage people to make the effort to vote, and just possibly discourage voter intimidation tactics on election day.
What do you all think? Can we talk to our bosses, write our local papers, start a Support Voting civic movement?