Wednesday, October 12 is the LAST day you can register to vote in Florida. I urge my readers to volunteer thru that day registering as many people as you can. A judge made that happen because Rick Scott cynically refused to extend the deadline despite Hurricane Matthew, which ravaged Miami, Brevard, and other Democratic areas. We were all under curfew, had no power, and the elections offices were closed. Even the governor of South Carolina extended their deadline, and they weren't hit nearly as bad as we were. To be clear, there is NO DAMN REASON not to extend the deadline except to be cynical and prevent as many Democrats from voting as possible.
This is maddening, but not at all surprising. The Florida GOP has worked hard to make sure people in this state don't vote. The former head of the FL State GOP even came clean and admitted high level meetings with the objective of "keeping blacks from voting”. Jeb Bush and, more recently, Rick Scott, purged thousands of people illegally. Hell, they even denied bathroom breaks to people in Miami standing in lines for hours. Insane laws were passed under Rick Scott, including one that was designed to criminalize third-party voter registrations. (A teacher was fined $1000 for registering her students to vote). My wife, who is a minority, was even challenged at the polls by a pollworker because he felt the signature didn’t match her driver's license. Yeah, they can do that now thanks to Rick Scott. I told that son of a bitch he had better be a handwriting expert or we were gonna have problems. (She did eventually get a ballot.)
I used to be more lackadaisical about voting, and about elections in general. Florida changed me. If you want to know what inspired me to become a Democratic activist, I will tell you about the time I was prevented from voting. It was the now infamous 2000 election here in Florida.
I had just moved off the Air Force Base to take a civilian job. I had gotten a driver's license the year before, and I registered to vote at the DMV. I know I registered because the lady at the DMV was being very nice to me... until she asked me what party I wanted to register with. I guess since I was in uniform and in a very red area she assumed I was Republican. I said "Democrat", and she had a disgusted look on her face. Nonetheless, she told me I was all set.
Leaving the service and moving to the new location was stressful, and the election was the furthest thing from my mind. I will never forget the newscaster on TV. I was watching the news while unpacking and she started off saying, "If you want to vote in the election...", and I thought, Oh Crap! I need to register with my new home! Then she finished: "It's too late! Registration ended yesterday!" Double Crap! What do you mean it's too late!! It's a month before the election! OH, but wait!! I just moved off base! All I have to do is update my voter registration with my local election office, and I'm off to the races!!
Except when I called, they told me they had no record of me being registered to vote. None at all. I couldn't exercise my fundamental right to cast a ballot. I was furious! What do you mean I'm not registered!? I was told by the Supervisor of Elections that there was nothing I could do. A year-long resident of Florida out-processing with the military who followed all the rules---and I couldn’t vote.
Oh well. What difference would my vote make anyway.
I am now obsessed with making sure that not only am I legally allowed to vote, but others are as well. I have registered hundreds of people over the years. I decided to make those who kept me from voting pay dearly for what they did to me 16 years ago. My friends who suffered in Iraq went there because people like me were kept from voting.
Now, not only do I register people, but I always take off on election day and see to it that people have a ride to the polls. I volunteer with the county Democrats to be a poll watcher, which is needed. I fight like hell against those who would deny a fundamental right to vote in our own nation. I need to tell you the shenanigans here in Florida never f-ing stop.
The most repulsive thing I ever witnessed was in Sanford, when I was canvassing and knocking on doors. The poor area had paper door hangers that told people to vote ON THE WRONG DAY! It was 2004, so social media wasn't a thing back then. The mother fers who did that are still out in force today, but they know to be a lot more subtle now.
You need to be out there too. I plead with you to call your local Democratic party and volunteer. Register people to vote, take people to the polls, or be a poll watcher. In Seminole County, we have a list of polling stations color-coded (Red, Yellow, and Green) as to where the problem areas are. There shouldn’t be any, but it's a damn Christmas tree. I can tell you first hand that the GOP has plenty of poll watchers, but the Democrats are almost always short-handed. This year will be worse, since Donald Trump is has signed up an army to intimidate voters at the polls.
I don’t want you to get pissed off---I just want you to do something this election. Volunteer in any capacity. If you hate the local Democrats, then volunteer with any number of groups that do good work (MoveOn, League of Women Voters, etc.) Or volunteer for a local campaign of someone you believe in.
Please do something. The other side is very threatened with losing their power this year and they will pull out all stops—legal or not. The GOP has grown more racist, more misogynistic, and more unstable. They have to be defeated at every level, no matter how hard they make it to vote.
Don't regret not getting involved. I can tell you 16 years later, the regret doesn't go away.
UPDATE: Mike Ertel, the supervisor of elections in Seminole, is an asshat. He was on NPR attacking people who register people to vote!!! He also defended Rick Scott refusing to help hurricane victims who couldn’t register to vote.
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