We’ve all heard that the coming presidential and congressional elections
are the most significant in decades, perhaps the most crucial of our
lifetimes. While this is important news, it’s not especially good
news for African Americans. The number of parties and candidates that
will be available to choose from in November is seriously limited and
the range of issues those candidates are willing or able to talk about
is further narrowed by our country’s media and corporate elite.
Voters in most states will search in vain for congressional or senate
candidates with a prayer of winning who oppose the policies of permanent
war in the Middle East, the explosive growth of the military budget,
or who speak out for single payer health care and protection of the
right to organize and join unions. On the state level, voters will
have a hard time finding on the ballot – much less electing – gubernatorial
or legislative candidates who want to equalize funding between rich
and poor school districts, or who will search for ways to shrink the
prison population instead of expanding it.
Looking for a candidate for district attorney who will indict some
corporate criminals along with the wife beaters you see in their undershirts
on “Cops”? Keep looking.
Despite the presence on the ballot of Barack Obama, Maxine Waters,
Cynthia McKinney and a few other happy exceptions, the bad news is
that the lack of appealing candidates who address the issues that African
Americans care about continues to contradict and undermine the best
efforts of progressives to register people to vote and keep them politically
engaged. But the good news is that 2004 is the right time to get to
work ensuring that voters in our communities have a wider selection
of progressive candidates in the next election cycle, and that those
campaigns have what it takes to be viable in 2006.
Looking beyond 2004
The keys to building viable, vital, progressive campaigns in 2006
lie in making the most of 2004’s opportunities, starting with the summer
and fall mobilizations for voter registration and GOTV (get-out-the-vote).
For community-based organizations of all kinds, these are unparalleled
opportunities to expand your own lists of volunteers and contacts. After
the 2004 election the challenge for organizers will be to stay in contact
with the good people who gave their time and effort, and to identify,
listen to, and stay in touch with a constituency. Organizers who can
bring this off will be best prepared to mount aggressive voter registration
drives and campaigns in the typically low-turnout municipal elections
that most states require in odd-numbered years. Electoral power is
built “from victory to victory,” requiring that organizers stay in
contact with volunteers and constituencies in every contest between
now and the 2006 primary elections.
It’s a long road, easier described than traveled. But better electoral
choices and smarter organizations to push them in 2006 can only arise
out of long-term, methodical efforts. The time to begin – was yesterday.
Running grassroots electoral efforts for candidates, ballot propositions,
etc, is both labor- and knowledge-intensive. Campaign know-how has
become largely the province of a small class of pricey consultants
whom the big players hire to deploy an arsenal of sophisticated tools
to target audiences, package and deliver messages, bring them out to
vote, or keep them at home. Lack of access to much of this knowledge
is a problem for under-funded grassroots campaigns of all kinds. Consultants
zealously guard this knowledge base, thus making themselves indispensable and
freezing grassroots activists out of the game.
New Internet Tools
For cash-strapped community based electoral efforts, and for advocacy
groups without a lot of money who want to influence elections, it is
far from a level playing field. But for under-funded challengers in
Democratic primary elections, things may be about to get a little easier. Ken
Colburn and Bill Cooper, the proprietors of the web sites TechPolitics and FairData,
have done democracy a great service by providing local organizers free
online access to some of the tools which previously
only high-priced consultants have been able to deploy and deliver.
Colburn and Cooper believe that democracy gets better with use. After
reviewing Cooper’s tools, Colburn shared them with his TechPolitics
mailing list:
“Bill Cooper has prepared hundreds of detailed
voter registration maps for focus precincts in Georgia, North Carolina
and South Carolina and posted them in Adobe format on the FairData
web site. These are invaluable documents which highlight precincts
with high percentages of African Americans of voting age, pinpoint
the location of registered African Americans who have been inactive
in recent years (with list available), and show estimates of the
number of unregistered voters to individual census blocks.
Cooper provides three state links to precinct maps, and easy instructions: “Click
on a state link below, then select one of the named precinct maps
(choose a city to start), then use the "+" sign in Adobe
Acrobat to enlarge the map.”
readers are invited to explore the data:
(Adobe Acrobat is required to view the maps. The + sign within
Acrobat enlarges the maps, which can also be downloaded and printed
at 11” x 17”.)
Georgia
North Carolina
South Carolina
In a nation that truly valued popular participation in the electoral
process, tools like Cooper’s would be universally available and widely
used. But, this is America. Colburn explained to his list members
the value of Cooper’s tools:
“These postings make sophisticated data and maps
widely available to local groups and individuals without the resources
and means to produce such tools. Let us know if you would like
more detailed information on how to use the maps and on data sources
and limitations. Similar maps are available for Florida and
for parts of other states.”
The maps that the message refers to were produced by overlaying
the voter registration lists for the states in question with census
data, using state-of-the-art GIS (Geographic Information Services)
software. The technology makes it is possible to print out maps
of precincts with large numbers of unregistered minority voters.
Census tracts are considerably smaller than precincts. Cooper’s
maps bring precious data into focus by graphically indicating the
location of concentrations of unregistered minority voters within
each precinct so that serious local campaigns can seek them out
and sign them up.
This is empowering information, placed on the Internet for access
by any community group. The advent of this “technology in the service
of the people” is a significant step towards making electoral processes
more transparent and available to a wider group of players than the
traditional information hoarders.
“For community groups, obtaining a voter registration list can be
prohibitively expensive, at hundreds or even thousands of dollars
per copy,” said TechPolitic’s Ken Colburn. “We’ll soon be posting
the price list per state on the techpolitics.org web site. Alabama
tops the list at $26,653.30 for a copy of the list of registered
voters, followed by West Virginia, which asks $16,500 plus the cost
of burning the CDs. On the other hand California’s list is only
$30, and North Carolina’s is $25.”
When such data is prohibitively expensive, democracy becomes a rich
man’s commodity.
“There are a number of states for which we still don’t have up to
date voter files,” said Bill Cooper of FairData.org. “We’d certainly
welcome assistance in obtaining some of these.”
Hat’s off to the toolmakers
Besides the maps which detail the location of unregistered African
Americans by census tract and precinct, Cooper and Colburn between
them have assembled a great deal of other useful information.
Techpolitics.org has
applied census income and ethnic data to congressional districts
in ways that graphically illustrate the
disconnect between the interest of residents of congressional districts
and how the representatives of those districts cast their votes. readers
are advised to subscribe to the TechPolitics mailing list. We do.
And at the FairData2000 site
one can find, besides the maps already discussed, a wealth of local
examples of the types of
datasets that can be generated and made available over the web, including
census data, voter information, and GIS software. We all owe Colburn
and Cooper a debt of thanks.
Although it may be too late to generate similar maps for this fall’s
general election, there are local elections held in off-years everywhere,
and another round of Democratic primary elections begins in early
2006. With any luck and a little funding, this technology could
be freely available nationwide by early next year. In the absence
of viable third parties – which federal and state election laws make
all but illegal – the only route available to most progressive candidacies
for public office is via nonpartisan local elections and Democratic
primaries. Those are the places where these voter identification
tools can be put to the best use.
South Carolina’s primary is less than a month away; its voter registration
deadline has already passed. North Carolina’s Democratic primary
is not far off, and activists in Georgia still have a little more
than a month to put unregistered voters on the books before the
July 20 primary election. The tools are there. It’s time to get
something done.
Associate
Editor Bruce A. Dixon has started a weblog (He calls it Zumbi's
Weblog). Visit him at http://radio.weblogs.com/0137191/.
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