Vote for Change!

Voter Registration is the next important priority for the Obama campaign. You can register to vote without leaving this site if you scroll over on the left side to a red banner from "Rock the Vote." If you click on it, the voter reg form will pop up right now, and without even leaving this blog you will be registered to vote in about 2 minutes!!

All American-born and naturalized citizens who are 18 on or before November 4, 2008 and who are not currently imprisoned or on parole for a felony are eligible to register to vote.

People with a felony conviction ARE able to vote if they are not currently in prison or on parole (if they are on probation, they CAN vote). Many convicted felons don't know this: they may be surprised and elated to hear that they have NOT lost the right to take part in our democracy and vote for our leaders. People on parole can register others to vote, and that can be a great way for them to get engaged with the political process while they wait for their parole to end. Someone told me tonight that in some of the primaries the efforts of parolees to register their friends to vote had a powerful impact and record numbers of first-time voters were registered by parolees.

In California,

October 20
is the last day

to register to vote!!

You can't register
on election day!

I attended a voter registration training yesterday morning and learned a lot about registering voters. It is important to become familiar with the rules and regulations, but really it is pretty simple. You can learn more at the official California Secretary of State Voter Registration Website (and you can download the 50+ page guidelines: Secretary of State's Guide to Voter Registration).

Here are some of the main points:

1. Anyone can register voters (you don't have to be a citizen or 18+, and you can be a parolee)
2. Any person can get 50 voter registration forms from their local county election official. In my local county of Alameda, the Oakland Courthouse is the place to go (1225 Fallon St Room G-1; Hours 8:30am-5pm; Phone: 510-272-6973)
   
3. To get more than 50 forms: Complete and submit a Statement of Distribution Form and a plan of distribution to the Secretary of State, mailed or faxed to:
   

California Secretary of State
Elections Division
1500 11th Street, 5th Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: (916) 653-3214
Phone: (916) 657-2166.

If you want to register voters in another state, you can contact that state for registration forms, but you can also click here to download the universal form that people in any state can use to register to vote in any other state (you just mail the form in and the gov't sends the registration to the correct state). This is great to have for voter registration on college campuses or tourist areas, since out-of-state voters cannot use the state-specific forms, and students may want to register to vote at their home address rather than their school address.

Tips & Tricks

• Highlight the voter reg forms so that the required items stand out
  
• Have some forms highlighted and folded up for people who want to fill it out later

• Have 2 clipboards so you can serve more than one person at a time
• Write a message like "REGISTER TO VOTE!" or "ROCK THE VOTE" on the backside of the clipboards, so people can see it as you are walking around
  
• Voter Reg Cards are too long to fit on even a legal sized clipboard, but if you just fold along the perforation between the registration part and the instructions part (which gets detached anyway when you mail the forms in), the forms will fit perfectly on a regular size (8x11) clipboard

• Bring Extra Pens--You must use Black or Blue INK only
• Attach your pen to your clipboard with ribbon, string, or elastics

• Give out stickers or buttons or some little trinket to people who register
• Go to places where people are waiting already (long bathroom lines, at the carwash or laundromat or pharmacy, lines at amusement parks or concerts, etc)
• Go to fun places such as sporting events, concerts, parks in summer, outdoor events, festivals, and conventions
  
• Before you start registering voters, check with the place to make sure it is OK for you to be there (and if it is OK to display your candidate's stuff or whether it must be nonpartisan)

I did a voter registration event in Oakland today where we went to the Oakland A's game and registered people who were "tailgating" in the parking lot! it was so great!! People had barbecues and chairs and they were hanging out together for hours before the game started.


When I got there, I was teamed up
with a new friend:

my awesome partner
Ruth
(Ruth + Ruby = perfect team).



We went around together, talking with folks, registering them to vote, and giving out Obama stickers. It was a lot of fun!

I even got to sign up one voter for the very first time. She is a naturalized citizen from Vietnam and she was grateful for the ease with which she was able to register to vote at a baseball game. I hadn't thought of the significance of it before, but baseball is the American national pastime and voting is a patriotic duty/right--so it kind of makes sense that you would register to vote at the baseball game.

There were other volunteers registering voters, and the group of us got about 25 people registered today.

I got 4 people registered myself (and handed out probably 5 more reg forms to people who wanted to do it later).

I registered some people waiting in line for the port-o-potty and one of them joked to the other that he would tell his grandchildren, "I registered to vote while I was waiting to take a piss at an A's game!"

We offered everyone in the potty-line Obama stickers and most people took them. Several asked sweetly, "Could I possibly just have 1 more?" I gave those people 4 or 5 stickers, and I gave extra to anyone who was super-excited (lots of people). I told them, "Stick it where someone will see it!" I ran out of stickers--I had more than 100 when I left home this morning.

Anyway people were generally jazzed about being able to register to vote while sitting out in the beautiful sun, eating burgers and drinking beer, with someone to help them if they were confused.

This was the last voter I registered, on my way back to BART. A proud Oakland A's fan, he was super-excited because he's going to Australia to study abroad but he wants to be able to vote in the November election. He's leaving on Wednesday, so we almost missed him!

What does that say about the urgency of now?