Whirlwind Voter Registration Week

Here's a couple of photos of my sign-making process...

The last day of Voter Registration was Oct. 10, so I interrupted sign-making and phone calling to try to register as many voters as I could. The encouraging thing is that so many of the Hispanic community who are citizens are already registered (one man told me that the Spanish language TV gave directions how to register on-line). I did not meet one person of Latino origins who was apathetic about the election, not one.

 

Sunday morning I went with Shaikh, a Bangladeshi man, to try to register tenants of his apartment building. However, we found that most of them were not legally able to vote. He asked me to come along because of my Spanish, so it was good to be able to use it that way.

Both photos are taken at the Democratic office in Gilbert. Here I am with the vibrant Roberta, one of the staff members there. Roberta gets three times as many volunteers to sign up as any one else in the office in a given time period, (and three times as many voter registrations) she just makes it sound like the most fun thing in the world.

The phrase on the sign I'm holding (actually painted on the back of a clipboard) was suggested by Kathy. (Thanks, Kathy!) She said that a group in Idaho uses it. It is Spanish for "Your vote is your voice."

I found that the sign really helped me to stand for hours in front of El Rancho Market (decidedly out of my comfort zone) because most of the non-English speakers who passed by would smile when they read the sign. Of course those people could not register to vote (those who have passed the citizenship test do have some English) but the smiles made me feel less culturally alienated.

Love, Lennie