If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you’ll see a “Rock the Vote” Voter Registration Widget. Why did I put it at the bottom where nobody sees it? Well, mainly because you can’t really register to vote. Rather, you can get somebody to send you a filled out form that still requires you to sign and return it.  It’s convenient, but not all that effective. But real online voter registration? That would be great.

It’s not often that I praise Senator Ron Calderon, but I’ll give him credit for putting forward SB 381, a bill that would create real online voter registration. The bill would use the signature from your driver’s license or other DMV issued ID card as signature confirmation, if necessary, at the polling place.  In addition, you’ll have to enter your driver’s license #, DOB, and the last four digits of your social security number.  That’s quite a bit of information, but the old process of voter registration remains available offline.

A few Republicans even supported the measure.  It’s typically not a very Republican-ish idea to welcome new voters, but in the Elections committee, Ams. Niello and Adams decided that with all the security measures they could get behind it.  Not so for the Appropriations committee, where the vote went party-line style. Asm. Doug LaMalfa goes back to the voter fraud meme in order to get in on the voter suppression act:

“My main concern is that voting security is not tight enough as it is and allowing online registration won’t help,” said Assemblyman Doug La Malfa, R-Biggs (Butte County), who voted against the bill in committee. “We should set a high bar for people looking to vote and there are already a lot of fake IDs out there.”(SF Chronicle 7/30/08)

And there’s your fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans realize that the greater the voter turnout, the worse the results for them. Democrats, on the other hand, want to facilitate the process of democracy by allowing California citizens to vote. The choice is clear: build walls or escalators. I think it’s clear that for the process of democracy, we should be building those escalators to the voting booth.

The only remaining question is if we can do this, why can’t we do same-day voter registration? Same-day registration has worked in seven other states. And guess what, the top five states in voter turnout are among them. I understand that it would cost some money to implement, and take some time. But, who can really be against making it easier for us to vote? Oh that’s right, Doug LaMalfa doesn’t want to welcome new voters, he wants to build some nice gated community walls around our polling places.

DaDonGate has been receiving all of the attention this week, but Assemblyman Fabian Nunez apparently decided he wanted some of the limelight:

A campaign committee set up to boost Democratic voter registration has transferred $600,000 into a committee controlled by former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.

The payment from the Voter Registration 2008 Committee to Nunez’s Committee to Protect California’s Future , was dated July 2, just one day into the new filing period for political contributions.

The shift of funds marks the latest infusion of cash into a committee controlled by Nunez. After the 2005 special election, the California Democratic Party paid $4 million into a Nunez-controlled committee.

Nunez will be termed out of office in November. He has not made public any future political plans. Under state rules, he could choose to spend the money without limits on a statewide initiaitve campaign, or he could transfer portions of the money to a campaign for future office, subject to state contribution limits.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen with that money, but we need it today for registration,” said Assemblyman Charles Calderon, D-Montebello. “Without knowing what the circumstances surrounding that transfer, it looks like it’s no longer available for voter registration. That’s a problem.”

In somewhat related news, Assemblyman Nunez also scored some ink today when the LA Times editorial board wrote he was enhancing, “the suspicion that a lawmaker’s real bosses are the special interests that make contributions and expect something in return, and not the constituents back home who send the lawmaker to Sacramento and whose taxes supposedly pay the salaries.”

How many new Democrats do you think could be registered with $600,000?

I had a voter registration event posted on my.barackobama.com on the 4th and it was a great experience.  It got a post about it on the main Obama blog, where they even used a lot of my writeup about why I’m doing voter registration.   I have to say, as someone who’s never used the MySpace or the Facebook, that using MyBO was super easy for setting up and managing the event.

I encourage you all to use it, particularly because there’s a lot of crossover with what other folks are doing.  I’m hoping to help match up people who are on MyBO with events that the local Dem club is doing (Torrance) and to help Debbie Cook in the race just next door on the Palos Verdes peninsula in CA-46.  

I really wish I’d seen the picture of the awesome sign in this post before my event.  It was used in Colorado, but it could be used just as easily in California.  Our group were really only pushing registration/re-registering, but we could have also gone for perm. absentee registrations, volunteer recruitment, and better visibility for the campaign.   Next time…

If you’re in the South Bay and want to get involved in voter reg, please let me know.  pdandpb AT earthlinkDOTnet.

 

(It’s great to see Mike Connery posting here – and his point about AB 1819 is excellent. – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

Cross posted from Future Majority.

The level of douchebaggery exhibited by the California Republican Party is astounding.  The SacBee reports that a recent bill brought before the state assembly would seek to allow 16 and 17 year olds to “pre-register” to vote, making them automatically eligible to vote when they turn 18.  Not a single Republican voted in favor of the bill, and many seem to have over-exerted themselves in trying to explain why it’s such a bad idea:

The bill passed the Assembly and was sent to the Senate last month on a party-line vote, 45-31, with no GOP support.

Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Hesperia, criticized the bill as a Democratic power play.

“For all their sweet-tongue talk about doing what’s right for the country, that’s baloney,” Adams said.

“The truth is, when you’re young you tend to think like a liberal,” he said. “As you get older and wiser … you tend to become more conservative.”

Aside from the fact that the last statement is utter nonsense (pdf), how cynical, and how wrapped up in your own personal power do you need to be before you can make these statements without a little piece of your soul dying with them?  I know that Republicans like to suppress the vote, but I never expected them to be so blatant about their motives.  Usually they at least try to cloak it in their own “baloney” about “voter fraud” or some other fantasy menace.  

One of Assemblyman Adam’s GOP colleagues was more subtle:

Assemblyman Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, said his opposition to AB 1819 has nothing to do with partisan politics. The state should excite teenagers about voting, not play a useless numbers game by amassing forms from disinterested students who can’t cast ballots for two years, he said.

“(I want) to have a citizenry that is informed, engaged and interested,” Niello said. “If you have that, they’ll register to vote – and they’ll vote.”

So the state should “excite teenagers about voting” (whatever that means), but shouldn’t actually allow them to register to vote.  If the state GOP really believes that youth will naturally vote Democrat (not necessarily a given; see: Ronald Reagan), in what way is this not playing the numbers game?

The state should do whatever it can to increase registration rates among all voters, including youth who participate at lower rates precisely because many lack a valid registration.  Anything else is playing politics with the voting rights of the electorate.

May 19, 2008

Democratic: 7,053,860 (43.75%)

Republican: 5,244,394 (32.53%)

DTS: 3,128,684 (19.40%)

May 22, 2006

Democratic: 6,685,288 (42.67%)

Republican: 5,387,865 (34.39%)

DTS: 2,890,973

I expect that we would see a surge in Democratic registration due to the presidential primary, but did not think it would be quite this good.  We now have reversed the trend of dropping our share due to the rise of the DTS stats and have a greater share of the electorate registered as Democrats now, compared to four years ago.  It is small, but compared to the dwindling Republican numbers it is impressive.

Keep in mind that voters did not have to register as Democrats to participate in the Democratic primary.

The overall voter registration numbers have grown to 16.1 million, a growth of a million voters since the 2004 primary.  The growth actually increased the percentage of eligible voters who are registered to vote from 68.96% in 2004 to 70% now.

This really would be better in a formal table, but I just grabbed it from Secretary Bowen’s press release. Fixed by Brian.

In order to rise from a relative unknown who lost to Chicago legend Bobby Rush in 2000 to the cusp of a Presidential nomination today, Barack Obama did not only have to court all elements of the varied coalitions that rule over politics in Chicago, he had to build the pie of voters large enough to be someone all those coalitions wanted to rally behind.  In 1992, Obama, working as a community organizer, registered 150,000 residents throughout Chicago to vote in what ended up being a landmark election, as Carol Moseley Braun became the first female African-American ever elected to the US Senate.

This weekend I attended an Obama Vote for Change rally in South LA which ended up registering 615 new voters.  It was one of over 100 events all over the country; here’s a report of another one in Birmingham, Alabama.  Over 400 volunteers attended the Los Angeles event, heard from a few speakers, were trained in voter registration (most of them were doing it for the first time), and sent out into the surrounding area.  Now, 600-some new voters in the LA area isn’t going to sway much politically or ensure an already-fairly-assured Democratic victory in California.  But it does build the tent, not only for the general election but beyond.  I’ve written at length about how Obama’s gamble is to build an electorate that’s so big that he has a serious, almost insurmountable advantage for both his election and his agenda.  A nationwide effort maximizes resources, keeps that army of volunteers excited and doing work, and builds that base to be dispatched for the general election.  In addition to voter registration, the volunteers were signing up registered voters to volunteer later in the campaign.  We could see a million people on the ground all across the country in November.  That’s special – and different.

John Kerry outsourced the field and mobilization to ACT and other outside groups and it was a stupid way to go.  Obama thinks he has a better idea that will work long beyond the election, and I support that aspect of it.  I worry about his shutting out the outside groups that have come out of the progressive movement since Bush’s first election, but I will note that yesterday’s event was at the campaign offices of Mark Ridley-Thomas, a progressive running for LA County Supervisor, and the event in Huntington Beach doubled as the kickoff event for Congressional candidate Debbie Cook.  So there is a layering effect, where the local candidates are benefiting from Obama’s work at the national level.