Due to the work of Chicago Votes, Illinois now has online voter registration. The deadline to register for the February 24, 2015 municipal election is midnight (Central Time) Tuesday, January 27, 2015.
The people in my household & I have been organizing in our local community (as part of our activism with Northside DFA). I live in a precinct bounded by Lawrence (4800 N) & Argyle (5000 N) and Kimball (3400 W) and Lawndale (3700 W).
Here’s the deal. Lots of people on the target list of the Chuy Garcia campaign have moved. While there is almost no one who supports re-electing Rahm Emanuel, there are tons of households where the people aren’t registered to vote.
My ask is simple: tell people they can register to vote online. Say it on social media. Send emails to people who have recently moved.
Even if someone hasn’t updated her/his address on his drivers license or state ID, you can still register at your current address based on the DL or state ID with the old address.
Every poll that says Rahm Emanuel has a chance of breaking 50% is based on “likely voters”.
Four years ago there were 590,357 votes cast in the race for Mayor of Chicago. I am concerned about falling voter participation in 2014. The 2014 primary participation rate sucked. However, in the Guzzardi race (Northside DFA was the first organization to endorse Will Guzzardi) in the 2012 election he lost by 125 votes and in the 2014 race where he beat the incumbent with 60.41% or 1,832 votes), turnout was in line with historical turnout.
In the most hotly contested race where volunteers were going door-to-door, the voters did vote.
If people see there is a clear difference and someone looks them in the eye & asks them to vote, they make the effort to vote.
But they need to be registered to vote.
I want to see social media reminding people to vote. I want people to know they can register at their current address even if their drivers license or state ID hasn’t been updated to reflect their current address.
I want the Chicago Board of Elections to be processing tens of thousands of online voter registration requests in the next 48 hours.
[Since I drafted this, Steve Singiser made a related point about the youth vote in midterm elections. My hypothesis is that young people are moving around more, like in my neighborhood and registering to vote just isn’t a priority. We need to put extra attention on young voters to ensure they are not excluded from the process.]