Voter Registration Drive

We conducted our voter registration drive in front of the Greenfield Garden Cinema, between 11am – 2:45pm. We purposely scheduled our drive to be later in the day than the other drives because we hoped to get some of the cinema cliental, and the first movie showing was at noon. This did not work so well because to my recollection, not one of the people who registered with us was actually a movie-goer. While we were there, the cinema did not get many customers at all. This made sense to me, because on a Friday afternoon most people are in school or at work, and cannot go to the movies. This was the main reason I was against having our drive at the movie theater in the first place. I wanted to have our drive somewhere that would attract more people during the day, but the rest of my group was in favor of doing it in front of the Garden and so I deferred. Our location did work out nicely though, because during our drive it was raining and so we were protected by the Garden’s awning. The manager also gave us free popcorn.

We had $1 concession stand coupons as incentives for people to vote. We had planned on have Garden-related incentives from the beginning, but we did not know what those incentives would be until we go to the Garden on Friday and talked to the manager. Because we did not know what the incentives would be, we could not advertise for them and so I do not think they were what drew people to our table. I actually do not think that they served as an incentive at all. It seemed to me that the people who registered did so because they wanted to vote, not because they wanted the coupons. We did not have to bribe anyone into voting, so the coupons ended up being little bonuses.

It seemed like there were three distinct groups of people on the streets of Greenfield during our voter drive. There were the business people who were dressed for work and often walked in groups. They seemed in a hurry and did not stop to chat. It is hard to remember specifics, but I think that they were an even mixture of men and women. None of them registered with us to vote. Then there were the old people, many of whom were probably retired. Since they were probably not employed, it made sense that they were a prevalent group on the street during the work day. I think one or two of the elderly people voted. Then there were the people who were not in the best shape. People who seemed a little crazy and not fully with it. I was a little struck by how many people who we saw were like this, but then I gave it some thought and it actually made sense. These people were not as likely to hold a job, which explained them being out on the street during the day. There was one woman who tried to donate money to us, but we explained to her that we were not accepting donations. We gave her some websites she could visit that would tell her how to donate to a specific political party though. I think we registered one or two people out of this group. The rest of the people we saw were a mishmash of adults who did not fit one description. A few had kids with them, but the majority didn’t. Obviously we did not see anyone of elementary through high school age because they were all in school. Most people we talked to said they were already registered, which I thought was a good sign in terms of civic involvement.

People reacted very positively to our drive. Lots of people congratulated us on doing a good thing, and told us to keep up the good work. I think sometimes adults view teenagers as a bit apathetic and so they may have been glad to see us out actively working for our community. Some passersby asked us where we were from, and when they heard we were from Four Rivers, we got some congratulations on our MCAS scores as well.
When we first started the drive, we would ask people walking by if they were registered. Sometimes when we asked this, people would answer “no” and keep walking. This was a little weird, because if they were not registered, you would think that they would stop. Then it occurred to us that maybe they did not realize we were registering people to vote. If someone was walking by quickly, saw a booth and someone asked them if they were registered to vote, they may have assumed that we were campaigning and only wanted to talk to registered voters. So, we changed our question to “would you like to register to vote?” The very first time we asked this, someone stopped and registered.
We did not talk politics with everyone, but we did with a few people. One woman called to us as she was walking by that she would be voting for McCain, but everyone who voiced an opinion was pro-Obama. This was not surprising in the least, considering that the Pioneer Valley is overwhelmingly liberal. I saw some people walking by wearing Obama buttons but none of them registered. I assume that most adults who are wearing political buttons are invested enough in the election to have made being registered a priority. One man pointed out to us that if you register to vote, you are automatically registered for the draft, should there be one. He said that it was just something to think about. We also talked to a woman who said that her dad votes Democrat, but registers as a Republican so that he can have more of a say in Republican politics. Ha! Sneaky…
I felt that as a whole, our voter drive was successful. We got nine or ten people registered, and one man took ten more cards to register others. We had one teenager who was registering for the first time, and that was really cool. I think that if I were to do it again, I would like to do it at the homeless shelter, like Jacob’s mom suggested, because people there might be more out of the loop in terms of their voting rights, etc.