Louisiana

The St. Charles Parish Registrar of Voters Office will conduct voter registration drives this week. On Thursday, May 17, a drive will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Winn-Dixie, 12519 U.S. 61 in Destrehan. On Friday, May 18, registration will be from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Walmart, 13001 U.S. 90, Boutte.

Voter Registration Drive 2012

Virginia

The Department of Motor Vehicles’ Roanoke-based mobile customer service center, called DMV 2 Go, will be open for business outside the Bridgewater Plaza located at 16430 Booker T. Washington Highway, in Moneta, on Wednesday, May 23, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Virginians can update voter registration and more.

Missouri

Voter registration opportunity for Parents of TLC Attendees at WEB DuBois/TLC, 6409 Agnes, Kansas City, MO on Saturday, May 19th, 10:00am.

Maryland

Saturday, May 19, 2012, Howard County Voter Registration Drive from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM at the Central Library, main meeting room.

Arizona

May is Voter Registration Month in the Verde Valley, and the voter registration drive is scheduled for May 16 and 17 at Food City in Cottonwood; May 18 and 19 at Walgreen’s in Sedona.

Pennsylvania

Voter registration drive, Walmart Supercenter, 400 S. State Rd., Springfield, PA, Saturday, May 19, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

Connecticut

On May 17, voter registration drive at New London High School. Another voter registration drive will be held at The Williams School on Friday morning, May 18th, and Saturday at NSA (formerly C Town) Supermarket in the New London Shopping Center from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. On May 22, at Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School to register parents of students during an open house from 5 to 7 p.m.

Michigan

Voter Reg Drive, Saturday, May 19, at 521 E. Grand River, East Lansing, MI.

Georgia

1.) Voter Reg Drive, Saturday, May 19th 3-5pm at the Rosa Jackson Center, 1211 Maynard St, Macon, Georgia.
2.) Voter Registration on Saturday, May 19, at the Ben Hill Recreation Center, 2403 Fairburn Road, SW, Atlanta, GA

North Carolina

Saturday, May 26, at Beatties Ford Rd Library, 2412 Beatties Ford Road, Charlotte, NC.

Nevada

The Clark County Election Department is hosting voter registration drives at area malls and the County Election Center on Saturday. Residents will be able to register to vote from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday at the Boulevard Mall, Galleria at Sunset, Las Vegas Outlet Center and the Meadows Mall. The Clark County Election Center at 965 Trade Drive, Suite A, North Las Vegas, will be open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday. Residents with Nevada driver’s licenses can register online on the Election Department’s website at clarkcountynv.gov/vote

New York

MONROE FREE LIBRARY, 44 MILL POND PARKWAY, Monroe, NY, on Saturday, May 19, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. BILINGUAL registration available.

Need directions? Use Google Maps.

Please check back later for any new voter registration drive news.

Voter Registration Drive

Florida Voter Registration

In political terms, the ground game is the process of mobilizing voters and getting them to the polls. And the first step is registering people to vote.

But this year, there are tough new restrictions on groups that conduct Florida voter registration drives. The restrictions already appear to be having an impact on the number of people who are registering to vote.

“We go to dense Hispanic neighborhoods — shopping plazas, supermarkets,” says Natalie Carlier of the National Council of La Raza, “and basically we’re just out there talking to people, letting them know that we’re providing a service and that we want them to vote.”

With clipboard in hand, canvasser Melli Romero approaches shoppers at the bustling La Mia Supermarket in Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood, asking if they have a Florida voter registration card and, if they don’t, whether they’d like to sign up to vote.

Shoppers come and go while music blares from a nearby coffee shop. It’s one of the places where Carlier says her group likes to register new voters.

Over the past two months, Romero and others with NCLR have registered nearly 10,000 Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade County.

This is work the group has done before, but this year, registering a voter has become more time-consuming and exacting than in the past. Each canvasser now must first register with the state. And groups must turn in completed forms within 48 hours — rather than the 10 days they had previously — or they’ll face significant penalties.

The new rules are part of an election law passed by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature. Because of those rules, and their potential penalties, the League of Women Voters and some other groups have stopped conducting Florida voter registration drives. The League is challenging the rules in federal court, but in the meantime, few nonpartisan groups aside from NCLR are registering voters in the state.

Although the new rules have been in effect less than a year, it’s clear they’re already having an impact. In the first eight months the law was in effect, 81,000 fewer new voters were added to the registration rolls compared with the same period four years earlier.

Along with restricting third-party groups conducting registration drives, Florida’s new election rules also cut back on the number of days polls are open for early voting. And they require those who change their addresses on Election Day to cast provisional ballots.

Camila Gallardo of NCLR says those are all measures that disproportionately affect minorities. She doesn’t think that’s a coincidence.

Florida’s new voting rules, the activists charge, are less about combating fraud than about politics.

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GOP Invalid Voter Registration Forms

State and federal campaign records show Momentum Political Services was paid some $49,000 by the Sacramento County Republican Party to boost GOP registration ranks in key battleground communities.

Those efforts appear to have been successful, especially in eastern parts of the county.

But a number of what election experts refer to as “bad” registration cards – ones that, for one reason or another, are invalid – have also been submitted during the drive. Sacramento County elections officials put the tally of the GOP invalid voter registration forms submitted by Momentum Political Services at more than 31,000.

In some instances, cards were submitted with street numbers or names that can’t be found. In others, the voters themselves don’t appear to exist, as formal county registration letters come back undeliverable. Officials said a number of cards were also submitted for individual voters who not only couldn’t be located, but who also all had the same last four Social Security digits.

And in some instances, the voter’s party affiliation appears to have been changed, by someone, to Republican.

The charges of serial submission of GOP invalid voter registration forms sound very similar to those leveled in 2008 against another outfit hired by the California State GOP to register Republican voters before that year’s Presidential election. In that case, the head of the firm was arrested, and eventually pleaded guilty to voter registration charges himself.

In 2006, another firm hired by the CA Republican Party turned in thousands of registration forms with fake names and an error rate as high as 60 percent. And in 2004, a firm hired by the GOP was investigated in a number of states for shredding Democratic voter registrations and tossing them into dumpsters. Despite those allegations, the same folks were later hired by the McCain/Palin campaign in 2008 to run voter registration drives before the Presidential election.

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GOP Invalid Voter Registration Forms

Voter ID Laws Political Games

Four years ago, Democrats expanded American democracy by registering millions of new voters – mostly young people and minorities – and convincing them to show up at the polls. Apparently, the GOP is determined not to let any such thing happen again.

According to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which keeps track of changes in voting laws, 22 statutes and two executive actions aimed at restricting the franchise have been approved in 17 states since the beginning of 2011. By the center’s count, an additional 74 such bills are pending.

In theory, what could be wrong with demanding proof of identity? In the real world, plenty.

As Republican strategists are fully aware, minorities are overrepresented among the estimated 11 percent of citizens who do not have a government-issued photo ID. They are also painfully aware that in 2008, President Obama won 95 percent of the African-American vote and 67 percent of the Hispanic vote. It doesn’t take a genius to do the math: If you can reduce the number of black and Latino voters, you improve the Republican candidate’s chances.

If photo ID laws were going to be the solution, though, Republicans had to invent a problem. The best they could come up with was The Menace of Widespread Voter Fraud.

It’s a stretch. Actually, it’s a lie. There is no Widespread Voter Fraud. All available evidence indicates that fraudulent voting of the kind that photo ID laws would presumably prevent – someone shows up at the polls and votes in someone else’s name – just doesn’t happen. read more by Eugene Robinson

Voter ID laws, voter registration laws nothing but political game

ALEC - American Legislative Exchange Council - Voter ID Laws

ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) announced that they were discontinuing their Public Safety and Elections Task Force. This Task Force was responsible for the drafting and promoting of most Voter ID laws that has been in the news lately. This move came after many organizations put pressure on their corporate members to stop funding an d supporting ALEC.

What is ALEC?

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an ideologically conservative group consisting of business interests and conservative state legislators for the purpose of drafting research, policy papers and model legislation to assist and influence state legislatures and promote conservative initiatives. According to the organization’s website, members share a common belief that “government closest to the people” is “fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C.” ALEC is perhaps most well known for drafting model legislation that can be easily adopted by state legislators and introduced as legislation. ALEC also serves as a networking tool among state legislators, allowing them to research the handling and “best practices” of policy in other states.

ALEC currently has more than 2,000 legislative members representing all 50 states, amounting to nearly one-third of all sitting legislators, as well as more than 85 members of Congress and 14 sitting or former governors who are considered “alumni”. It also claims approximately 300 corporate, foundation, and other private-sector members. A list of ALEC leaders in the states shows that party affiliation is predominately Republican.

For ALEC Exposed, the Center for Media and Democracy made a new website to house over 800 ALEC “model” bills which were previously unavailable to the public. It developed dozens of tools to enable citizens to track ALEC politicians, corporations and bills moving in their states.

The political advocacy group Color of Change recently announced a call to boycott Coca-Cola due to its support of ALEC and their advocacy work that allegedly encourages voter suppression through voter ID laws. In response, Coca-Cola announced it was ending its relationship with ALEC in apparent response to the threatened boycott. Kraft Foods and Intuit dropped support for the group under apparent pressure. Additionally, Pepsi had quietly withdrawn its support earlier this year. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also withdrew their support for ALEC. McDonald’s just severed ties, and Wendy’s said that it had done so at the end of 2011. Mars, Inc. has also dropped its memberships with ALEC. Blue Cross Blue Shield announced that they would not renew its membership. Yum! Brands, which operates Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and other restaurants, announced that they had dropped their support of ALEC. And Proctor and Gamble has just dropped their membership.

On April 17, 2012, ALEC announced that it was disbanding its Public Safety and Elections Task Force, which provided model bills for voter ID laws and “stand your ground” gun laws. But on April 18, the National Center for Public Policy Research announced the recreation of a voter ID laws task force in the wake of the ALEC boycott.

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Register Vote College Student Opinion

I’m not politically perfect. In fact, I’m far from it. In the three years since my 18th birthday, I have yet to register to vote. My high school political science teacher yelled at me, people on the Quad yelled at me and my mother scolded me — but today I’ve finally manned up and registered to vote.

Let’s just say it had to do with the fact that I’ve been busy. And I couldn’t submit it online, and I hate mailing things in. But when I thought about it, there wasn’t really an excuse.

I wasn’t taking the time to register for one of the most important yet simple ways to get my opinion around.

What also clinched it for me today was the fact that there are students out there that have legitimate voting problems. In some states, officials are making it harder for students with laws that prevent students with an out-of-state license from voting. According to the New York Times article “Keeping College Students From the Polls,” some government officials feel our age demographic is “‘foolish’ and tends to ‘vote their feelings’ because they lack life experience.”

I thought about all of those factors. All of the kids our age that are discouraged to vote in other states. All of the age and wisdom we’ve accumulated over the 19, 20 or 21 years of our lives. It’s not a cliche, it’s not a joke. We’re smart. We’re ready. We can make the right decision. We can start that wave of change, whether we are Republicans, Democrats, Independents or Whigs.

I chose to register to vote and mail in my ballot today because I didn’t want to continue being that girl who talks about change and service — but doesn’t act on it. Now, I’m not trying to twist anyone’s arm who legitimately doesn’t want to vote. But if you’ve been “meaning to do it” or “will get to it later,” when you have time, stop.

Don’t just talk about change: Register Vote

REGISTER VOTE

Voter Fraud - Little Evidence, Big Restrictions

Under new or proposed laws, voters would be required to show photo ID, or to prove their U.S. citizenship at the polls. In some places, same-day voter registration would be ended, new restrictions would make it harder to run voter registration drives, and early voting has been curtailed. Four states have now made it more difficult or impossible for ex-felons to re-establish their voting rights, even after they’ve served their sentences and again become taxpayers.

Some say such measures are necessary to stop widespread voter fraud across the country, although such claims are unsubstantiated. The more likely reason is to suppress the vote of those groups that traditionally support political opponents. The vast majority of the authors of these new restrictions are Republican legislators. The vast majority of those voters being suppressed are college students, minorities and senior citizens, who usually vote Democratic.

While most Americans have an official photo ID, about 10 percent don’t, even though they work and pay taxes. If a state requires its citizens to show a photo ID at the polls, then it should make sure that ID is easy to obtain without additional hardship and expense.

Photo ID laws do nothing to stop voter intimidation, vote buying and ballot tampering. Voter fraud is serious, but intentionally keeping honest voters from the ballot box threatens democracy itself. “Voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression,” wrote Circuit Judge Richard Niess, who blocked a Wisconsin voter ID law.

Indeed, the biggest problem at the polls isn’t unqualified people scheming to vote illegally. It’s qualified voters staying home by the millions.

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Campus Vote Project - helping college students to vote

Students face this and several other unique challenges to the ballot box. These challenges include: not knowing voter registration rules and deadlines; not having acceptable ID for voter registration or voting purposes; confusion about where to vote; lack of transportation to the polls; and occasionally confronting unfriendly or unsympathetic election officials and poll workers.

Several states have pursued legislation that limit access to the polls, including restrictive photo ID requirements, placing onerous restrictions on groups holding voter registration drives, and reducing early voting options. All of these new limitations directly affect students’ ability to cast a ballot by creating more barriers to participating in our elections.

The traditional barriers to the ballot, combined with these new voting restrictions that will disproportionately impact students, are why the Fair Elections Legal Network (FELN) has launched the Campus Vote Project (CVP) to work with students and college administrators — in collaboration with local election officials — to institutionalize the best practices helping college students by promoting and supporting student voter registration, education, and voting.

CVP will work with student partners and higher education institutions to adopt goals that are needed and achievable on campuses to encourage student voting. Central to the campaign is a toolkit (available at www.campusvoteproject.org) that includes step by step guides on many actions that can be taken, ranging from how to hold an election awareness campaign, to integrating voter information into a school’s website, to making sure students have the right voter ID and moving polling places onto campus.

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“The Democratic Governor of Minnesota – Mark Dayton – vetoed a voter ID law last year – but the millionaires and billionaires are trying to get it passed as a ballot measure now in November. If successful – Minnesota will join eight other states who’ve passed or strengthened voter ID laws in just the last year – from Kansas – to Mississippi – to Rhode Island – to Wisconsin – to Alabama – to South Carolina – to Tennessee – to Texas. According to the Brennan Center for Justice – more than 5 million eligible voters will be disenfranchised this election thanks to these new laws. And those are mostly minorities, the poor, the elderly, and college students – mostly people who’d vote for Democrats and support stronger middle class policies. 5 million people – wiped off the voter rolls. This is an all-out assault on our democracy – and it’s all happening under the radar of the mainstream media.” Thom Hartmann

Register to Vote - Voter Registration

Some 24 million voter registration data in the United States contain significant errors, according to a recently released Pew Center report.

Although the errors affect one in eight registrations, researchers at the Pew Center on the States said they don’t believe it indicates widespread voter fraud. Rather, Pew believes outdated data systems are failing to keep up with the most basic changes in people’s lives, leading to perceptions that U.S. elections are not as sound as they could be.

To address the voter registration problems, eight states are currently working on a centralized data system designed to help identify people whose information may be out of date.

“A lot of people probably assume we do this already,” said Sam Reed, State of Washington’s secretary of state, who oversees their elections. “I think it’s going to bring more trust and confidence in the election system.”

The Pew Center says a centralized data system along with online voter registration will save time and money by eliminating the need to print millions of registration forms, enter information by hand, or send mail to outdated or wrong addresses.

“That’s a tremendous cost to the taxpayers,” said David Becker, of the Pew Center on the States.

The Brennan Center for Justice, which has done numerous studies on voter registration issues, is also calling for the modernization of data systems. But they caution that states need to take extra care not to eliminate legitimate voters from their rolls. The Brennan Center said there have been a number of cases recently in which voters have been improperly deleted from the system because two people happen to have the same name and date of birth.

Many states are enacting laws requiring state-issued photo IDs to vote, saying such laws will prevent rampant voter fraud even though cases of such fraud is rare. These type of voter suppression laws are being directly opposed by the Brennan Center.

Maryland credits the Pew report with turning the state toward online voter registration, allowing voters to update their information on the web.

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