Voting Makes a Comeback: On the Importance of Registering Voters and Getting them to the Polls

Winning an election is not a mystery. You want more people who support your candidates and issues going to the polls than people who support other candidates and issues. Americans didn't seem to vote much in the last 40 years...but that is starting to change.

In the 2004 Presidential election, we returned to levels of voter participation not seen since the 1968 election between Nixon and Humphrey, where just over 60% of the eligible population turned out to vote.

According to federal records, only 70% of the eligible population is actually registered to vote, which means we need to reach out to that 30% of unregistered voters!

According to Dr. Michael McDonald of George Mason University, voter turnout in the United States has been largely misrepresented due to comparisons of votes to people of voting age; however, comparisons using numbers of eligible voters still demonstrate, in my opinion, that not enough Americans vote. One of the lowest voter turn outs in his records was 52% in the 1996 election between then President Clinton and Bob Dole.

Perhaps voter participation has not changed radically since 1972; we seem to hover around the 55% mark, as seen in McDonald's study of participation in presidential elections since 1948. Since 1948, the only time we hit 65% participation was in 1960 in the presidential race between Kennedy and Nixon! Between 1952 and 1968, voter participation remained above 60%.

An interest in changing the world did not retire with the baby boomers who broke through to a counter culture! Once again, people are getting involved in governance because they recognize that their voices matter, and they don't want to risk not casting a vote.

Your vote is your voice!

If we are to show the world just how much Americans care about democracy, we need to bring those 30% of unregistered voters into the fold!

In 2004, 62% of Pennsylvania's eligible voters participated in the election. In 2008, 32% of Pennsylvania's eligible voters participated in the April 22 Primary.

We need to make sure active voters get out and vote!

More people are interested in politics than have been since 1960! We have a great chance to show people that collectively they can and will make a difference.

Not sure where to start? In Pennsylvania, we can increase voter registrations by targeting women!!

A study of women in Pennsylvania in 1998 to 2000 indicated that only 62.3% of women are registered to vote. Of those, it seems that only 47.3% voted!

It was a stratgey in the 2004 election, and it is again in 2008, no matter who is the democratic nominee. If candidates want to win, they should make sure women are registered and getting out to vote.

More people are getting involved because they see how politics affect their day to day lives with gas prices, the cost of food, health care, joblessness, home financing, and, of course, the threat of losing more soldiers....

Declare yourself! Vote!

Involvement through County Committes and Campaigns (a summary of the Clearfiled County Meeting)

You can get more involved in democracy by joining your local democratic committee! There was a meeting of the Clearfield County Democrats on Tuesday, May 13th. If you live in Clearfield, PA, please consider joining them at their next meeting on June 10th.

At their latest meeting, the Clearfield County Democrats discussed several outlets for involvement including joining sub-committees to plan fund raising and voter registration events, attending the Pennsylvania Democrats Committee Meeting, taking the DNC Neighborhood Leader pledge, and hosting a house party for 5th Congressional District Democratic Candidate Mark McCracken.

The committee is currently forming a sub-committee to plan a voter registration both at the Clearfield County Fair the last week of July in partnership with the City of DuBois Democratic Committee.

A sub-committee will also be formed to plan a fund raiser later this summer. They are also in the process of developing a web page to help reach out to interested democratic voters.

Various other means of involvement and strategies were discussed that evening.
They were joined by Missy Stehr-Wood, the DNC Regional Field Organizer for Central PA as well as Clearfield County's Commissioner and 5th Congressional District Democratic Candidate Mark McCracken.

Missy Stehr-Wood invited everyone to observe the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee Meeting on June 6th and 7th. On Friday June 6th, there will be a fund raising diner at the Radisson Penn Harrisburg. On Saturday, June 7th, there will be VAN (aka vote builder) training as well as election protection training. Saturday is also when the state committee and caucus meetings are held, general members are welcome to observe. After the committee meeting, she meets with democrats from Central PA for a informal session of idea exchange. You can contact Missy at stehrwood(at)dnc.org.

Visit the PA Democratic Committee Site for more information about the State Committee Meeting on June 6 & 7.

Missy also joined the meeting to promote the DNC Neighborhood Leader Program. They ask that we each pledge to talk to at least 25 people about candidates at least three times before November! I know you can do it! If you are interested in taking the pledge and learning more about the program, then go to their site.


Clearfield County Commissioner and 5th Congressional District Democratic Candidate Mark McCracken shared stories of his success on April 22. He received 80% of the democratic votes from Clearfield County. If you are interested in helping to make sure Mark gets to represent us in Congress, then consider hosting a house party!

House parties are en excellent way for people to get to know Mark McCracken and to judge for themselves that he is the best person to represent the 5th Congressional District. Invite your Democratic friends as well as Independents and Republicans. To help Mark win, we need bi-partisan support!

I have been talking to Mark about his positions on climate change, touch screen voting machines, nuclear power, and other issues touched on by the WPSU 5th District Candidate Quiz. I know that some people find him to be less than progressive. However, Mark McCracken is someone who listens. I believe he is more concerned with promoting the interests of his constituents than he is with following his own policy agendas, and that is what makes him the best candidate for the 5th Congressional District.

If you are interested in helping Mark McCraken, visit his website for more information.

The Clearfield County Democrats are trying to make a comeback, and you can help. The committee's bi-laws were written in 1957, but the committee became inactive after the 1960s. We can help change the conservative, republican trend in rural PA by communicating with our friends, co-workers, and neighbors; hosting house parties and fund raisers for the democratic candidates in our region; and coordinating events to elevate the public profile of democrats in the area.


Please come to the meeting on June 10th at the Steelworkers Union Hall and get involved!

Tired of the Mainstream Media? There are alternatives!!

I am exceeding tired of watching CNN, FOX, and even MSNBC (sorry Olberman). Are you? There are alternative media sources out there!!

If you are reading a blog, then I know you are interested in alternative media!

Blogs are cool because they offer us, the general public, a chance to add to the free exchange of ideas!! What is not so cool is that the free exchange of ideas has not been free, or even cheap for quite some time. It really has not even been an exchange, ever since television became the #1 media format, driving newspapers and magazines nearly underground and driving up the cost of programming! Far too often, media operates under an assumption of what is desired by the masses and acceptable to the mainstream in a manner that produces too many stories that enable the manufacturing of our consent (see Noam Chomsky for more on this concept). Any critically thinking viewer was painfully aware of this while watching America Strikes Back (my phrase) type of coverage after 9-11 and particularly the Shock and Awe coverage of the Iraq invasion in 2003.

I typically seek out alternative news sources to supplement my regular news cravings because I know there is more going on in the world than the election, Rev. Wright, and Brittney's custody hearings.

The pundits make their living sensationalizing our world. I think this is important to remember. I think you know it, but, perhaps, you feel compelled to stay informed.

Watching mainstream media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox has its place. After all, it is, still, what everyone else is watching. You want to know what they know. Also, there are some keen analysts out there who can interpret events and help us see the significance of events, which is what makes them worthy news casters, Keith Olderman is one example, and even though he is on a comedy show, Jon Stewart is another. On Comedy Central's the Daily Show, where quite a few people get a regular dose of news, Stewart does an excellent job of getting straight to the key issues of the day. He also nicely connects current events to what happened in the past. This makes things funny as well as essential for our for understanding of a big picture. Otherwise, someone like Cheney can claim he never said that Saddam Hussein was connected to the 9-11 attacks, or a bunch of other claims, and people who were not paying attention or who have a short-term memory could believe him.

If you are in the mood for some alternative media, something that touches on issues at a variety of levels of national and global significance, and it not as biased toward some corporate network owner's values, or, at the least, is not skewed by their perspective of what you want, then check out Democracy Now and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. You do not need cable to watch either of these shows. The News Hour is on PBS and Democracy Now is available online. I typically watch the podcasts.

Depending on where you live, you may be able to hear Democracy Now on the radio, specifically Pacifica radio stations. The show is broadcast on 737 stations worldwide. I discovered Democracy Now while living in DC and listening to WPFW-DC live. After that, I was hooked! With her Edward R. Murrow-esque tone, it is easy to become absorbed in what she is talking about. Co-host Juan Gonzalez is also engaging and direct.

You can also catch Democracy Now on satellite television on the Link-TV: Television Without Boarders and Free Speech-TV channels. Both of these channels provide incredible documentaries and informative programing that offer insights into some key issues of our global economy such as deforestation in the rain forest, the life style of people in western china, the impact of medicine on people's development, and war in the Congo as well as AIDS concerts, film festivals, international music videos and so much more. I have also been trying to get into Al Gore's TV/Internet experiement: Current TV, which is an interactive media of user developed content. We can watch things online and then vote for things we like. Programs with the most votes go on the TV channel. Some of it is amazing, others not so great. But it is always interesting.

Go beyond what networks and sponsors want you to see and explore the alternatives.

Neither Democracy Now nor the News Hour have changed their format to mimic the visual spectacle to which you may have grown accustomed. Therefore, it may be hard for you to consider it "a real news show." For those of you who are more likely to watch Brian Williams or Katie Couric, you should also be expecting a bit of a change, but hold in there. These news shows will give you more detailed information on a variety of hard hitting issues.

I would consider The News Hour and Democracy Now essential viewing for staying up to date on important current events. If you watch these shows, you may even lose the feeling that you MUST stay tuned into the 24 hour news cycle.

Do yourself a favor, step away from the sensationalist media and try to stay focused on journalists with perspective and restraint and a desire to keep you informed on a variety of issues.


Okay, there are, of course, more sources of alternative media.
Here is a developing list (please post any sources you know and love):

Mother Jones
TruthOut
ZNet
Alternative News Network
Counter Punch
Buzz Flash
Behind the Home Front
AlterNet
Utne Reader
Independent Media Center
RINF: The Breaking News Alternative

Click for a list to more resources from Michael Moore

Summer Involvement: Voter Registration & Education in Western PA

The real work of democracy is never done. The real work of democracy is involvement at every level of governance. We need to reach out to even more people and ask them to register to vote. We need to make sure more people, more democrats, vote in November.

There are several races in Western PA that need our help. If we are to have more democratic elected officials working to safeguard the future of PA and our democratic values, then we need to act.

The National Democratic Party is asking people to volunteer to be neighborhood leaders and talk to 25 people about voting and elections at least three times before November. But, we can do so much more!

We could have voter registration drives throughout the summer at fairs and carnivals or even yard sales and picnics!?

This is the first step in getting our democratic candidates, such as Mark McCraken for the 5th district Congressional Race, Don Hilliard for the 25 state senate district, and the presidential democratic nominee into office. (Please tell me about the other candidates running in our area who need our help!)

More people need to be ready to participate in elections! Since January, we have already registered 218,923 new voters! 70 % are democrats! Of those, 164,026 people changed their party from republican to democrat!

We can do voter registration outreach by setting up at the various town and county fairs in Jefferson, Clearfield, Clarion, Centre, and Elk Counties (forgive me if I left yours out). I think we should each suggest this kind of action to the people in our democratic committees as well as to our friends and family. Find out what you can about what it will cost to set up at your favorite fair.

Setting up at fairs and carnivals will cost money. To fund the table, I suggest getting donated baskets to raffle to try to fund the tables or, as one person suggested, we can set up a dunking pool--which would be great fun!

Please try to think of other forums were we can target unregistered citizens. Let's continue to get more people involved with democracy!

Even if you are just having yard sale, why not put out a few voter registration forms or ask for educational materials on our democratic candidates. We can set up in malls, outside of grocery stores, and a variety of places.

We just need people who are willing to make it happen. I truly believe more regular Americans would be democrats if they understood our values and did not believe the conservative hype.

My mom told me how her grandmother, a woman who knew what it meant to be denied the right to vote, used to gather with women in the area to discuss politics. We Americans have begun to take this right for granted.

We need to make politics something that every person cares about, and we need to help them see that being involved in politics is so much more than the cult of personality nonsense they see on FOX and CNN. Politics is very local, and it affects each of our lives.

If we are not telling our elected officials at every level of government what we need and expect, then we deserve what we get: nothing! We also need more efforts to educate voters.

I urge each of you to write about candidates in letters to the editor or on your blogs. Tell your friends and family why you are going to vote for candidates. We need more coverage of our local politics in our papers. You can do this through letters to the editor, and by contacting news editors about story ideas.

We need people who are willing to educate people about the decisions that are happening in their own towns and counties that affect how they can do business and go about their regular lives.

Please post your ideas on how or where to set up voter registration drives or coordinate efforts to educate voters about democratic candidates and local/regional politics.

All ideas are welcome.