Telling people they can’t do something they have a right to do just makes them want to do it. #vote
by digby
I heard rumors that O’Keefe and company are in North Carolina hoping to get some black faces on camera so they can raise a little money from their racist supporters. But it’s not likely to work. People are on to their tricks.
And anyway, the problem with all these vote suppression tactics is that it’s having the opposite effect. It turns out that people don’t like being told they cannot do what they have every right to do and so they get involved in ways they might otherwise not have done. Imagine that:
This fall, two immigrant-support organizations in Charlotte are joining forces to reach out to a thousand Latino and Asian voters in North Carolina’s largest city to cast votes in this November’s midterm elections.
The Latin American Coalition (LAC) and the Southeast Asian Coalition (SEAC) are two organizations supporting the booming populations of Latino and Southeast Asian immigrants in Charlotte. They share an office in central Charlotte and first crossed paths through the national New Americans Campaign, through which they have worked together to support immigrants through the naturalization process and to push for comprehensive immigration reform.
This fall, LAC and SEAC are coming together again in a home-grown effort to mobilize a thousand registered Asian and Latino voters of the 9,000 Asian and 17,000 Latino* registered voters in Charlotte. Targeting two precincts in southwest Charlotte with the highest numbers of registered Latino and Asian voters, LAC and SEAC plan to reach out through door knocks, mailers, robo-calls, and live calls in the weeks leading up to the election.
With a goal of making 12 touches per voter, the project is the most intensive get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaign that either group has undertaken. It will test and build the organizing capacity of each organization as they look to 2016 and beyond.
The campaign also experiments with mail-in absentee ballots as a way to increase turnout among immigrants. LAC and SEAC’s joint teams of Latino, Asian, and other canvassers are knocking on the doors of Latino and Asian households, encouraging people to mail in their vote by absentee ballot this year. It’s a method of voting that’s been growing across the country in recent years and makes voting easier for voters, particularly those who can’t take time off from work to go to the polls. Oregon and Washington state actually conduct all of their voting by mail. In North Carolina, any registered voter can request an absentee ballot by sending in a request form. These must be submitted by Oct. 28, a week before Election Day. Ballots must then be returned to the voter’s county board of elections by 5 p.m. on Nov. 4.
Gosh, all these African Americans and latinos and Asians all seem to be getting involved in politics. It looks like trying to suppress their vote is having a galvanizing effect.
Here’s a little ditty about Vote Suppression that’ll get stuck in your head all evening:
If you haven’t donated to any Blue America candidates as yet, here’s the page. All the money at this stage will go toward getting out the vote. We’d love to see some of these folks defy the odds and with your help it’s entirely possible that a few of them might just pull it off. Stay tuned.
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