I registered to vote today. No, it's not my first time, and no, it wasn't because of some epiphany I had.
But I caused the woman soliciting voter registration to have an epiphany.
It was all about kicking Bush to the curb.
I was approached by a woman as I was leaving a shopping center today in inner-city Baltimore. She asked if I had a "voter card" and I asked if she meant a "voter registration card." She said yes and I told her I did, but just moved and need to re-register with my new address. She helped me fill out the form, said thank you, and thought that was the end of it. But then I started asking questions.
"Who are you working for?" ACORN, she replied, and said it was an organization working to improve the lives of inner city dwellers. "You know, helping the 'little guy'," she said. I mentioned how a lot of voter registration workers in 2004 were paid by the Republican party to only register Republicans and several of them threw away any registration forms of voters who registered as Democrats. She insisted she was not one of those people, and I could already tell she was probably not one of the 2% of African-Americans (+ or - 4%) who support Bush.
We talked politics for just a bit, even after she said she was not allowed to really talk politics because she was not allowed to influence anyone's party affiliation decisions. I told her I respected that but as she had already seen me check the "Democrat" box, she just kept talking, because she knew she wasn't influencing me.
She said ACORN's main objective these days is to register a lot of young people. I agreed that was a good strategy. Then she said something very interesting:
A lot of people ask me, "Is this for Bush? Because we've got to get him out of there!"
I tell them, "No, it's for governor."
That's when I helped her see the light. I told her:
Yes, but this is also for Congress, and if the Democrats take over Congress, they will probably impeach Bush!
She had not realized that there were very important midterm congressional elections this year. I told her that if anybody else says that about getting Bush out of office, she should tell them how important these elections are this year and that if they vote, they might just help kick Bush out of office early.
The talk then turned to local politics. She supports Duncan for governor, while I support O'Malley. I told her that I'd be happy with either one, though, just as long as Ehrlich is kicked out. We talked about Lt. Governor Michael Steele. I told her he was running for Senate and she rolled her eyes and said "Oh, Lord!" She said that she didn't think he'd win the Senate seat and I told her Ben Cardin probably would. She was glad to hear that.
We went on to discuss how I was raised in Alabama and had a (now deceased) grandfather that was once a card-carrying member of the KKK, and how I couldn't stand to be around those people. I told her, though, that Alabama was starting to turn back to a Blue state lately, and that I might return there to help paint it blue. But first, I plan to battle any dirty election day tricks the Republicans might have up their sleeves for the inner-city Baltimore precincts.
All in all, it was a good conversation, but it was also an important one. We need to stress the importance of the midterm elections to the people who don't normally vote or who don't tend to vote except in presidential elections. The better the turnout, the better chance we'll be able to take both Houses of Congress. And if we kick out the rubber-stamp Republicans, we can finally bring up articles of impeachment that might actually stick.
As I walked down the sidewalk in Lexington Market later, I was approached by another ACORN representative soliciting voter registration.