The deadline for would-be voters to register in Florida is around the corner and we can’t help but wonder if the projections and goals of all the different get-out-the-vote groups have paid off.
And we can’t help but think that they haven’t.
Judging by the late start that many groups got — thanks to the state law that hampered the way they collect registration forms (read: Gov. Rick Scott‘s voter suppression efforts) — there are way fewer newly registered voters than there could have been.
A last minute push by the League of Women Voters of Miami-Dade and Voto Latino netted a whole 50 new voters in Hialeah over the weekend, as of 2 p.m. Sunday (with four more hours to go). Statewide, Voto Latino has registered about 350 voters across the Sunshine State. The state League of Women Voters has registered 3,000 as of Friday, according to Miami-Dade chapter President Maribel Balbin.
“The significance is that if we had not stopped registering voters because of the law, we would have registered 13,000,” Balbin told Ladra, referring to the law that required all third party groups that conduct registration drives to return the completed forms within 48 hours.
“That’s impossible,” Balbin said. “You would be fined $1,000 if the election department didn’t get it in 48 hours. We are all volunteers, and to put that burden on a volunteer, who would have to pay a $1,000 fine if they didn’t get the forms in on time, we didn’t think that it was fair.”
In August, the court ruled against the 48-hour rule, imposing instead a much more logical 10-day turn-around period. The League started collecting in earnest in July, at Miami-Dade College, FIU and places like the mall and Diaz Supermarket in Homestead.
“We’ve tried to reach out to every single area where there are minorities and students, because it is proven that more minorities register in places like this,” Balbin said, adding that the organization’s partner in this effort, Univision, chose the areas to concentrate in.
“They were place that were identified with a lot of Hispanic citizens who were not registered,” Balbin said, as she helped a new voter from San Francisco with a new Florida application. (For the full photo album, click here).
Voto Latino is concentrating on the Hispanic youth, said Otayme Valenzuela, South Florida field organizer for the group.
“The youth think none of the issues in an election really matter to them,” Valenzuela explained.
“We try to bring it to them in a way they understand. If they go to college or university, we try to focus on rising tuition costs.
“If there’s a park or community center in their neighborhood that needs fixing, we tell them they need to go out and vote for their mayor and local representatives,” Valenzuela said.
“We make it about their issues, what’s important to them,” he added.
“We make sure they know this election is about much more than Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.”
Still, it’s been slower than they would have liked.
And because Monday is a holiday, they are really out of time.
Though I expect the Miami-Dade Elections Department to be a madhouse Tuesday. See you there?
(Ladra thanks McDonald’s in Westland Mall for having free wifi so I could post this from the scene).
Wanna vote? Tuesday is last day to register in Florida added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
