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Nonprofits leverage community roots-bases in attempt to register voters and get them to the polls
October 16, 2018
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Nonprofits leverage community roots-bases in attempt to register voters and get them to the polls
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally appeared in October 2018 issue of The Reader (www.thereader.com)
From left to right: Arlenne Rodriguez, Karina Hernandez, Angie Remington, Zack Burgin, Aracely Rodriguez, Brett Andres, and Kinzie Mabon
With American civil discourse and liberties under assail, nonprofits are doing civic engagement around voting to get people’s voices heard.
Heartland Workers Center runs a large Get Out the Vote (GOTV) machine. Center Executive Director Sergio Sosa senses great urgency from HWC’s Latino base for the Nov. 6 midterm general elections.
“The current political climate is causing fear among those most vulnerable,” he said. “This climate has also motivated many to be- come more engaged in the voting process as a way to combat that fear. Immigration has recently become more important for Latinos, especially after DACA being under threat and the termination of Temporary Protected Status.
“The recent separation of families at the border and raids in O’Neill, Nebraska, only made this issue more urgent.”
Perennial issues – healthcare, education and the economy – have voters’ attention, too, he added.
The same holds true in the African-Amer-ican community. It’s where Barry Thomas. an organizer with Omega Psi Phi fraternity’s Omaha chapter, Beta Upsilon, became a GOTV activist in response to proposed voter ID laws in Nebraska.
“Knowing the challenges and obstacles African-Americans faced to get the right to vote, when things start happening to take the franchise away it’s a red flag or warning call to say we’re going backward instead of for- ward,” said Thomas, social studies curriculum director for Omaha Public Schools. “That’s awakened a lot of people to get active to en- sure we don’t let things slip back.”
Collective outreach, advocacy and impact are by-words in this age of connectivity and networking as energized groups try turn- ing apathy into social action.
Longtime local players in the election arena use various means to reach voters.
Civic Nebraska educates folks about voting rights.
The similarly named Nebraska Civic Engagement Table (NCET) acts as facilitator, ex- pert and support for many nonprofits doing the grassroots work.
Heartland and League of Women Voters Nebraska helped form NCET to foster a civic collaborative.
“When we launched in 2016 there were only a few nonprofits here that had ever done civic engagement with nonpartisan voter registration–voter turnout,” said NCET Executive Director Zack Burgin.
The Table began with 16 founding members and now has 50-plus. It supports organizations serving historically underrepresented communities or, in voting par- lance, the Rising American Electorate:
Young adults.
Single women.
People of color.
Low-income earners.
Returning citizens.
Thomas’ fraternity partners with groups focused on activating more African-American voters.
“We align our efforts to have a wider net of individuals we can capture, so it’s not just an organization doing a separate, isolated event but all of us collaborating to have a broader outreach with multiple events.”
Fraternity brothers and other partners assist Black Votes Matter in getting voters to the polls on Election Day.
Last April’s North Omaha Political Convention showcased this collective strategy in the lead up to the May primary. Since then, the network’s been at schools, churches and events such as A Taste of North Omaha.
“We’re going to where people are at to try to make sure they are aware,” Thomas said. “More than anything, it’s being present in the same proximity as people to make sure they are presented with opportunities to learn and to be engaged.”
“Our entire theory of change is that non- profit messengers are the most effective voices for civic engagement,” said Burgin.
His organization provides capacity build- ing training, grant funding and how-to tool kits that include, he said, “language tested and effective at increasing voter participation, such as reminding folks to be a voter instead of telling them to vote.”
Resources also instruct how to stay compliant with state voter registration rules and laws. Members reach out to voters in myriad ways:
Door-to-door canvassing.
Manning information-registration tables at block parties, inside lobbies, outside stadiums or gyms.
Direct mail.
Peer-to-peer social influence via email, phone or text.
“We make it so organizations can adapt tools for their own work and message.” said Burgin.
The Table also provides members ac-cess to the Voter Activation Network (VAN), whose public data base allows organizations to strategically target by voting patterns and demographics.
Heartland’s staff of community organizers provides experience and expertise tor nonprofits interested in GOTV work. Its organizers have worked with One World Community Health Centers, Latino Center of the Midlands, Intercultural Senior Center, South High School, Bryan High School, small businesses, educators and community leaders.
Meanwhile, the Douglas County Election Commission (DCEC) serves as convener and clearinghouse for all things voting and election related. It works closely with The Table and its most active members.
Deputy Commissioner Chris Carithers welcomes all the help his office can get in sharing registration-election deadlines, dates and procedures.
He’s seeing increased engagement.
“This year I’ve seen more requests from people to become deputy registrars – the folks authorized to go out and represent our office to register voters – than in 2016, which was a presidential year.”
He said the number of early ballot re- quests is nearly four times that of the last gubernatorial race in 2014.
“Also, our voter registration has topped 350,000 for the first time ever. It tells me a lot of people are interested in voting.”
Barry Thomas reads the same signs. “I’m definitely encouraged by it,” he said. “I’m just hoping no matter what happens in November the people who’ve become engaged, excited, motivated will remain so and not leave this civic engagement on the table. We want to make sure people stay aligned and in tune, so that we can let our voices be heard moving forward.
“I would love to see more young people being a little more attentive and better represented.”
His fraternity partners with its local college-based chapters and with the Black Excellence program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha to reach Gen Z.
“We want to make sure more young people are aware
and active to bring about change for their future. What’s happening today is going to have a longer impact on them than it will on anybody else.”
In his role with Omaha Public Schools, Thomas facilitates a partnership between OPS and the League to register seniors in all American Government classes on Constitution Day.
“We provided American Government teachers voter registration packets resulting in pledges from students to vote and to encourage their friends and family to vote,” said the League’s Joanna Lindberg. “These students will receive postcard and text remind- ers to vote and utilize our nonpartisan voters guide.”
Krystal Fox, a millennial who does GOTV work through the League and her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, also wants more young people participating.
“Trying to change that culture is going to be long-term. I think we’re at a good point to do it because a lot of young people are up- set with what happened in the last election.
I definitely feel that pain as well.”
Fox said she’s learned it’s best to keep things simple.
“As soon as I can get you to agree voting is important, then we can go deeper about how you make your decisions and where you can go to find
more information about candidates and is- sues.”
Chris Carithers supports diverse GOTV efforts, he said, “because you’re talking to people all across the spectrum about how their vote matters and counts.”
“Some of the groups are left leaning, some are right leaning and some straight down the middle,” he said.
“The more information groups can pro- vide their constituents, then the smoother the election’s going to go, and the more people are going to understand the safety and security of the election.”
Regardless of their leanings, nonprofits conduct very different GOTV efforts than do political parties.
“Nonprofits are doing it for their community,” said NCET’s Zack Burgin. “They’re saying vote for yourself, vote for your family, vote to empower your community – not vote for this agenda or for this specific candidate. These nonprofits are just saying what’s important is your voice regardless of who you vote for.”
Since 2012 Heartland Worker Center has conducted its I Vote for My Family campaign.
“It started in South Omaha and now it’s active in North Omaha, Bellevue, Nebraska City, Schuyler, Columbus Norfolk and Grand Island,” said HWC’s Sergio Sosa. “Our efforts are heavily focused on door to door. We also call people. We’re trying a new strategy called relational organizing that asks a person to list their network of relationships. We contact them several times to remind them to vote. We do also provide information via email and on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We’ve partnered with newspapers and radio stations to disseminate our message.
“But canvassing is the most effective strategy.”
Burgin said the strength of nonprofits do- ing GOTV is their “roots and relationships in the communities in which they are experts.”
“They’re there year-round and are going to continue engaging these communities,” he said. “Political campaigns come and go. Non- profits stay – and that’s central to our mission.”
Joanna Lind- berg, who heads the local League of Women Voters GOTV committee, said, “In 2018 we have registered 657 individuals at 84 events with our priority focus on low voter turnout areas of the city.”
The League is also focused on educating prisoners and ex-offenders about their voting rights.
“We try to hit communities less likely to be targeted by the campaigns,” said League member Krystal Fox.
The League publishes an annual voters guide and it conducts weekly candidate forums on KPAO-TV. It’s also produced videos and handouts in the languages of several Omaha refugee and immigrant communities.
Heartland also translates election materials.
Nonprofits provide captive audiences for the Douglas Country Commission to impart election information as well as pools of potential precinct poll workers.
When Chris Carithers talks to groups or neighborhood associations, he often corrects misinformation.
“There’s a perception we don’t count certain ballots. Actually, every ballot that’s cast does get counted if at all possible. There are legal issues that prevent some ballots from being counted but those are very small num- bers. We do everything we can to accept bal- lots. We don’t look for reasons to reject – we look for every reason possible to accept.
“If there are early ballots we can’t accept, Civic Nebraska is one of the groups that helps chase down those voters and explains to them why their ballot wasn’t accepted and what they can do to get it accepted so that we can count it for the election.”
Keeping GOTV players on the same page is part of his job.
“We have a monthly meeting with the stakeholder
groups to take care of any questions or foreseen problems and to help coordinate any election activities, so that people know the rules – what they can and can’t do. We also address how to get a hold of us in case they run into any problems so we can get anything remedied as quickly as possible.”
Visit votedouglascounty.com or call 402-444-VOTE (8683)
Read more of Leo Adam Biga’s work at leoadambiga.com.
by Leo Adam Biga
Categories: Community/Neighborhoods, Election, Get Out the Vote (GOTV), Heartland Workers Center, League of Women Voters, Nebraska Civic Engagement Table, North Omaha, Omaha, Politics, Social Activism, South Omaha, Voting, Writing
Community Engagement, Douglas County (NE) Election Commission, Get Out the Vote (GOTV), Heartland Workers Center, League of Women Voters, Nebraska Civic Engagement Table, Social Activism, Voting
To vote or not to vote
June 1, 2018
1 comment
To vote or not to vote
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally appeared in the May 2018 issue of The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Get out the vote (GOTV) efforts, whether partisan party-driven or community-based, are a staple of American politics. In this messy mosaic of interests, attitudes and demographics, you may regard voting as solemn civic duty or why-bother-it’s-rigged hassle.
Whether viewed as endorsement, protest, act of hope or futile gesture, your vote is coveted, if not always counted, as with some provisional ballots following a change of residence. With a prior felony, exercising the right to vote may be denied. Never assume anything though because regulations vary by county or state.
Omaha and Nebraska are no different than the rest of the nation’s red-blue map when it comes to voting trends and takes.
Douglas County Chief Deputy Election Commissioner Chris Carithers counters cynicism and apathy by referencing various local races decided by a few dozen votes.
“Every vote does matter,” he preaches. “It’s just convincing people of the power their votes can have.”
Issues make elections and candidates are the lightning rods that inspire or disturb the body politic. Primaries don’t entice the way general elections do, but it all comes down to who’s running for what offices. In the run-up to Nebraska’s May 15 mid-term primary, voter registration and education efforts have been in full-swing in areas of historically low voter turnout, such as predominantly black Ward 2 in North Omaha.
Politicos know 72nd Street is a boundary-line marker for voter turnout. On average, in general elections, about 75 percent of eligible West Omaha voters cast ballots compared to 45 percent in east Omaha. In Ward 2, the turnout reached 62 percent for the 2008 general election when Barack Obama won the White House. In the 2016 presidential election, that number dipped to 47 percent. Mid-term and municipal elections draw in the 30s and 20s. Given that, Carithers said, it’s only logical “who’s going to get attention” from elected officials, and thus, he emphasizes, it is in inner city voters best interests to have their say rather than stay away come election day.
Getting more urban core voter participation is a challenge. One reason is higher mobility rates, said Carithers. The more people change rental addresses, the harder it is reaching them with registration drives and with election date and polling place reminders.
Individuals without transportation or residing in shelters, half-way houses and nursing homes are tough to reach. Some may have been die-hard voters, but once out of the mainstream, it’s difficult recapturing them.
Many efforts target lapsed and new voters.
Omaha Black Votes Matter guru Preston Love Jr. was in his milieu evangelizing about the need to vote at the inaugural North Omaha Political Convention on April 14. The event drew some two hundred folks for candidate meet-and-greets, panel discussions on issues affecting North O and registration-voting information shares.
He liked what he saw.
“North Omaha in modern times has never had such a grassroots effort to get our people activated,” he said.
Omaha NAACP president Vickie Young said the convention represented a coalition of community partners working together for a common cause.
“We all have the same goal. We want people to register. We want them to get to the polls. We want them to be educated on the issues and candidates. It was a great effort with great participation,” she said.
The event was organized by Voter Registration Education and Mobilization (VREM) – a collaborative of community, civic and social service organizations.”We’re trying to motivate attendees to go out and get people on their block to vote,” Love said. “We’re hoping the results of this will be record voting for a mid-term election.”
Love, a former national political campaign manager. vowed, “It will be built on. We have captured attention. We want to corral this energy. We’ve got to start getting our people involved. It is critical.”
He envisions Black lobbying efforts aimed at the state legislature growing out of the event.
Spurring participation, he said, is a desire to unseat the conservative Republican stranglehold.
“What I’m finding in the community is a renewed awareness of the need to vote. People are very dissatisfied in my community and so that’s activating people to get involved.”
Love hopes to mobilize more door-to-door GOTV campaigns. He welcomes smaller, informal efforts, too.
“If you can get your neighbor or someone in your family turned on to participating, they have ripples because they talk about the issues or the candidates and they may be really proactive in getting folks to register.”
That strategy is behind some Heartland Workers Center (HWC) voter engagement efforts in South Omaha.
Young is counting on the ripple effect from the NAACP’s April 21 candidate forum to carryover on election day.
Frontline voter advocates are generally satisfied that the need to vote is being messaged and received.
“We can educate as much as we want, but we have to give people a reason to want to get out to vote,” Young said. “We have to make today’s issues that much more relevant. That’s what our branch is trying to do with initiatives such as the forum – to bring candidates in on a more intimate level to let residents ask them the questions they really want to ask and to get those answers. We can be that much more intentional with our questioning in regard to how candidates will handle racism, discrimination, education and increase diversity. We can then hold them accountable to those issues that affect people of color.”
North and South Omaha contain marginalized populations with low voter participation. In 2017, HWC partnered with Black Votes Matter on a Ward 2 canvassing campaign for the municipal election. Despite knocking on doors and making calls, voter turnout slightly decreased, said HWC senior organizer Lucia Pedroza-Estrada, although a similar campaign in South Omaha helped increase turnout there.
Many things contribute to low voter turnout.
“Poverty has a dynamic effect on community engagement because people are trying to survive on a daily basis and things like this go to the bottom of the list,” said Love, who feels “there’s not enough information given to the rank and file.”
Perhaps the toughest barrier to overcome, he said, is that “people don’t see the difference and feel the difference even though there are in many cases testimonies of what difference is being made.” “If you ask many people how their lives are different, they tell you, ‘I was poor and trying to make it before Obama, and I’m in the same place.'”
The disenfranchised are potentially at greater risk of voter suppression, but it appears Omaha’s been spared such tampering.
“I can’t think of any instances where anyone has done anything to intimidate voters,” Carithers said. “We were proactive in anticipating there could be some people challenging voters in the 2016 election and there were absolutely no issues.”
Omaha attorney Patty Zieg, a National Democratic Committee member and veteran poll watcher, said, “I haven’t seen intentional, official suppression. I also don’t remember any organized phone calls giving people the wrong election date like it happened in other states.”
Polling place consolidation implemented by former Douglas County Election Commissioner Dave Phipps in 2012 created an uproar in North Omaha.
“There was a perception we were trying to take these polling places away,” Carithers said.
Phipps was later replaced by Brian Kruse.
“Brian and I have gone out in the community to assure people we’re there to help them, not hurt them,” Carithers said. “We’ve made a concerted effort to make sure we’re in all the communities and giving information we think will be valuable to neighborhood groups. I think we do have a better relationship now than we did six years ago.”
“Chris and Brian have worked very hard at that. They’re very conscious of it,” Zieg said.
The nonpartisan commission intersects with many GOTV actors and advocates, including fraternities, sororities, church groups, the Empowerment Network, the Urban League of Nebraska, the NAACP and Black Votes Matter.
“We have a monthly meeting of what we call the GOTV stakeholders comprised of various groups interested in getting the vote out, ” Carithers said. “They run the political spectrum from right to left. We work with them to coordinate around what we can do to increase voter turnout so that people will participate.”
The League of Women Voters and Nebraska Appleseed are more players in this arena. Black Men United, Omaha City Councilman Ben Gray and the Empowerment Network host community forums.
“I think we each have a role,” Young said.
The Urban League’s Black and Brown Legislative Day schools participants on the legislative process as well as pressing issues and provides opportunities to meet elected officials. In partnership with Civic Nebraska, it holds Know Your Voting Rights trainings. Its Advocacy Task Force and Young Professionals auxiliary group work to reinstate voting rights for people with felony convictions, ensuring voter ID legislation is not passed, advocating for automatic voting registration and streamlining the registration and updating processes.
Bid to advance mandatory voter ID have failed in the Nebraska Unicameral. Carithers said his office sees no reason for special voter IDs since election fraud is a non-issue. It could also prove cost-prohibitive in this tight budget climate. Same-day registration and updating could create long lines and delays.
The Commission has switched voter verification (purge) programs after accuracy problems surfaced with the previous provider – CrossCheck.
Love is convinced education is the key to greater engagement. He’s organizing a summer “Walking in Black History” tour as a civics-history learning and leadership development opportunity for urban youth. Forty high school students from North Omaha will travel to 19 historic civil rights sites in Memphis, Birmingham, Montgomery, Tuskegee, Selma and Atlanta.
“I never saw a need to do a tour until I realized we’re taking some things for granted about the kids’ knowledge. The purpose is to try to plant seeds. My goal is they’ll come back wanting to participate in things like voting.”
He’s encouraged by a new, young crop of black leaders who’ve emerged as civic engagers and even candidates: Maurice Jones, Ean Mikale, Mike Hughes, Spencer Danner, Mina Davis, Tyler Davis. They are following the momentum of Black Lives Matter and other movements seeking change.
“There’s a lot of young people popping up. They’re all part of the future.”
Pedroza-Estrada is also buoyed by the dynamic young Latino leaders-engagers emerging in South Omaha. The immigration war is a catalyst for many.
Both she and Love want to help grow more social-civic-political volunteers and activists. It starts early.
“If we don’t show them the way or give them a reason why its important,” Love said, “then they wont vote and they wont become engaged in this process.”
Regardless of age, Vickie Young said, “We want to encourage more African-Americans to become involved in the political process, to run for office and get policies and bills passed that improve people’s lives.”
Vickie Young awarding Senator Ernie Chambers at the 2016 Freedom Fund Banquet
Love has found there’s no substitute for being “on the ground” rubbing shoulders with the constituency he seeks to energize. It’s why his office is on 24th and Lake and why he sends out door-to-door canvassers who mirror residents in that community.
The good fight is ongoing.
“It’s a full-time, year-round effort,” he said. “You have to build credibility – very important. You have to be a convener. You have to show you’ve invested in the community and what you’re telling people is right.”
Visit votedouglascounty.com or call 402-444-VOTE (8683).Read more of Leo Adam Biga’s work at leoadambiga.com.
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