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Voter/Election Protection Week continues as we flush out more data from this year's canvassing [1]

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Date: 2023-12-05

Just like last year, we ended up registering a lot more people who either needed to update their voting address or had never registered than finding voter wrongly included on the purge lists. But when we did find voters who had been removed from the voter rolls, we not only registered them, we also created a “Wrongly Included” Report, documenting their residence at where the state claimed they no longer resided. These reports were defensive in nature, not only for the voter but also lawyers who might be able to use this documentation to defend voter rights and protections in the state.

While this post deals with the results we found in Georgia, we used this same process in Ohio, North Carolina and Wisconsin, as well. I feel like i’ve talked a lot about Ohio this year, and the Georgia SOS is particularly aggressive in removing voters from the rolls. While we mark the names and addresses that were on the voter file removal list, we tell everyone we talk to that we are canvassing because Republicans are trying to remove voters in the area. We learned to be inclusive in the messaging when we were doing the same thing in Wisconsin in 2011 and 2012. Making sure that every voter we talk to knows that this is part of why we are knocking on their doors reinforces our messaging, especially in the case of removals due to the National Change of Address database. It encourages people to talk about it to their neighbors, to ask themselves, am I still registered to vote? Are you?

But it’s not the only part of our Election and Voter Protection effort. Another part of our efforts is to challenge the removal of voters from the rolls — not through the courts (there are other groups that do that), but at the doors. Especially in Swing States that use the NCOA (National Change of Address) database, and these tend to be states where Republicans serve as their Secretary of State, we include removed voters as part of our target population when we canvass. Walking turf that includes voters who have been removed (or about to be removed) from the voter rolls adds to our message that Democrats Care! and that we are doing something about the GOP’s heavy handedness.

Yesterday, i wrote about how Donald Trump is directing MAGA supporters to “go into” Democratic cities to “ to "guard the vote" in 2024 ,” and one of the steps Hope Springs from Field PAC is preparing to protect our voters and the right to vote. Specifically, i detailed how we prepare for pre-election meetings with District and State’s Attorneys, Attorney General Offices and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dep’t of Justice in the Senate and Electoral College Swing States, how we arm poll watchers with Incident Reports and how those completed Incident Reports prepare Election lawyers by documenting voter issues, intimidation and suppression.

Just as importantly, we found volunteers liked the idea of chasing down people who had been removed from the voter rolls, at least in the manner in which we conduct the search. Volunteers would come and specifically ask for the walk lists that included purged voters. I can’t explain why, and we didn’t create special lists; we simply marked it when there was a voter who had been purged from the rolls. But because we were telling everyone we talked to that we knew that there are people in their neighborhood who had been callously removed, neighbors were often willing to share what they knew. In one apartment complex, a voter was removed because his apartment number was not included in the database. More to the point, his number was included on his voting registration card, but just not on the state’s voter database. And it was hard for the voter and the volunteer not to jump to the conclusion that, “It’s because I’m Black, isn’t it?”

Hope Springs Voter Protection observation table w/ NGE list

Finally, the purge lists were central to our Voter Protection tables before the primaries. Every VP table we set up in Wisconsin and Georgia had a print-out (often, more than one) of local people who had been registered to vote who had been purged. And we did find family or neighbors who knew people on the lists and offered up information. At least one (perhaps two) voter brought the disenfranchised former voter back to the table.

Hope Springs from Field PAC is knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to increase awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights. We are thinking how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopevoteprotect

Hope Springs from Field was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. The approach we adopted was focused on listening, on connecting voters and their story to the candidate. Repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors. We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters).

In the last cycle, we found 319 people who have been removed from Georgia’s voter rolls who still lived at the same address. The Georgia Secretary of State told us these lists weren’t perfect, but they do seem to err in the wrong direction. Almost 90% of the voters we found who were wrongly removed were African-American.

Out of the 1,176 purged voters we found and registered in Georgia, 599 voted in the general election (50.9%) but only 39% voted in the Runoff. By contrast, 57.58% of the voters we helped get Photo IDs in southern Georgia turned out in the general election and 45.18% in the Runoff. Out of the 977 purged voters we were able to locate and register in Wisconsin, 438 (38%) cast a ballot that counted In November.

This year, in Georgia (GA SOS released its new list of voters they removed in July), we found and re-registered — and thus returning — another 1,116 voters to the rolls. Partly, this is the result of canvassing now in the Atlanta suburbs. One note (because i know someone will ask): Coffee County, which has become sort of infamous of late, was the only county among those where we have canvassed in Georgia that actually saw a reduction in the number of voters who were removed from its rolls in 2023 than in 2021. I find that weird.

In Ohio, where (in a much bigger state) the Secretary of State removed an eighth of the number that the Georgia SOS did, we only found 5 voters who were wrongly removed while we were knocking on doors. In Wisconsin, we found 31 voters (all African-American) and in North Carolina, we found 73 voters, many of whom were under the age of 25.

But we found that making these purge lists known, either to the Black Churches we were working with or at our Voter Protection tables, increased interest. Although we were (then and still are) pursuing a “super compliance” strategy, getting people engaged can be easier when they feel aggrieved. And we have found that by tracking down disenfranchised voters and then re-registering them with tracking information (including witnesses) makes it easier. I have seen reports of people who have been wrongly purged taking a couple of years to get back on the voter rolls by themselves.

These “Wrongly Included” reports and documentation were also included in our visits to local District, State and County Attorneys as well as the Dep’t of Justice Civil Rights Division where we also delivered the Incident Reports we had collected. We wanted to make everyone aware that we suspect Republican poll watchers, especially of the Election Denier persuasion, might try to make an issue of people who voted who were included on the purge lists.

If i haven’t conveyed the point: we do this because Democrats don’t have to accept all the obstacles that Republicans put in the way of our voters, especially minority voters. There are things we can do about it, you know, besides the normal act of complaining. We include looking for removed voters in our walk lists because we find that most people — and, especially, most voters who were removed — don’t know about it. Most voters don’t even realize it can happen. Voter lists should be as accurate as possible, but using databases like the NCOA for purposes they were never designed for does not achieve this. And, like i pointed out above, these efforts reinforce the message that Democrats Deliver.

Hope Springs from Field employs a rather traditional approach to GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote), including election protection. That’s because we are a grassroots (in-person) voter-contact project attempting to reinstall “old fashioned” voter contact before Covid. 2020 was a year where Republicans rapidly advanced and Democrats regressed in the area of voter contact, especially in the area of Election Protection. 2024 will be different, and, as we have demonstrated in Georgia and Ohio, we learned from GOP advancements in the area of voter removal and suppression. Which is why returning to old-school voter contact is so important to continue (and not a replacement for the other areas of voter identification, motivation and mobilization).

Like everyone else, we are asking for your financial support for these vital efforts. If you are like me, you are inundated with requests. We don’t have any cute pets, or special treats, to offer up to encourage your support. Nor will we try to guilt you by telling you the threat is real, ongoing and getting more sophisticated. We are all getting tired of it.

But if you are able to contribute to our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please do. We need your help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopevoteprotect

You can follow that link for our mailing address, as well (for those who would rather send us a check). Thank you for your support! This work depends on you!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/5/2209782/-Voter-Election-Protection-Week-continues?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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