I went voter-registering this morning, and ended up freestyling. I am by nature indolent on Saturdays, so I had no intention of writing or preparing for class, and I did what I often do on open mornings—I went to the local paper and Meetup.com to see what events were upcoming. The typical line-up in the paper includes lectures, readings, and music; the typical lineup on Meetup includes hikes, wine tasting, climbing, movies, and some politics.
On Saturday at 10 AM, an Obama group was meeting at a coffee shop to register voters for the upcoming North Carolina primary. I recognized the organizers name—Robert Petrusz had been a big Meetup host for Dean. About 7 people were signed up—I had no intention of adding my name (I’ve long ago lost my Meetup password, I just like knowing what’s happening), but I figured I'd go.
I got there at 9:30, and there were already about 20 people there—another 30 showed up over the next half hour. One woman came in with new “Durham for Obama” T-shirts. The organizers made various noises and answered various questions and all in all settled down the jumpy fear of strangers that can creep in to new people (a show of hands revealed that most had never canvassed before). Then half stayed inside to make posters and half came outside to learn about canvassing.
The two lead canvassers were warm—bursting really from their own last week’s experience—and gave us enough information to feel easy about the whole thing, and then enough more information to start feeling uneasy (if there’s this many questions, doesn’t that mean I’ll mess up?), but all in all were among the best I’ve seen, far better than most paid campaigns staffs in terms of giving reasons for decisions and sharing a genuine enthusiasm without any defensiveness or protectiveness. A few people who walked by were drawn in, and said they’d come back and canvass in the future.
(The only small off-note was the mention that the Obama campaign didn’t want people doing pro-Obama door-to-door, and hadn’t really explained why—any kind of campaign strategy that says “don’t be a citizen” always rubs me a little bit the wrong way.)
I assigned myself to bus-stop registration—the hobo citizens’ perch—and on my drive over to my bus stop imagined taking off the afternoon some time this week and riding Durham city transit, registering voters at every stop. But when I got to my stop, my partner wasn’t there, and a loud truck was pouring concrete. I decided to go freestyle voter registration instead.
There’s a Dollar Store off Lakewood near where I live, I thought, and set up there with a clip board. “Get yer voter registration here!” I barked to the Saturday shoppers, “Registracion para las elections!” I garbled.
“Any of you eighteen?” I asked a bunch of kids going into the dollar store. “Yeah, yeah,” one said, pulling down his shirt in a mock show of chest hair. “All together we are,” said his friend, “if you ad 13 to 14 just the two of us are old enough.”
“I’m not going to vote,” said no-chest hair, “even when I am 18”
“If nobody votes, we’ll have a king or dictator,” I said.
“Like Hitler,” said the girl, punching him. “You have to.”
“I have no problem with that.” He said.
“How would you like it if people could take everything you had, and there were no laws?” I asked. The girl punched him again. One of them went inside to buy something.
“Ask me anything,” I said. “Maybe I can answer it.”
They kicked the bricks for a few minutes and then no-chest hair came back.
“Okay, I gotta question,” he said.
I was in the middle of signing up a blind man, who actually passed me his wallet to show me his address.
“Is Obama gay?”
“No,” I said.
“The paper said he’s gay.”
“That’s the same paper that said that aliens visit us regularly. He has a great relationship with his wife and two kids.”
I shouldn’t have added the second line.
“That’s the best way to hide it,” he said. “I got another question. Is he going to take away rap music?”
“Not that I know of,” I said.
“I heard that on BET,” he said. “What about Hillary’s cool husband?” he said.
“You’re not going to vote for somebody because of their wife or husband,” I said.
“Yeah,” the girl said, and hit him again. “That’s stupid.”
I talked a little about foreign policy.
"I gotta question," he said. "What's the difference between Republicans and Democrats?"
"Well," (oh no I thought) "There have been different differences over time. One difference now is that Democrats favor health insurance for everybody and Republicans don't. Another difference is that Republicans are for the war in Iraq and Democrats are not."
"Okay," he said.
The friend came out and they left.
A woman my age (mid-30s) came through the door. “Why you don’t have a big sign or something,” she asked?
“Well I was at the bus stop but…maybe I can make one next week.”
A man passing by looked up. “You going to be here next week? I’ll bring my son.” I asked the woman to register. “No, I’m the store manager,” she said, pointing at the dollar store. Right next to the doors was a sign that said “SOLICITORS WILL BE DRAGGED AWAY BRUTALLY,” or the polite version of that. I think it might have said, “NO SOLITICITATIONS OR LOITERING.” I was doing both, but I decided not to point that out to her.
I went inside and bought poster board and pens to make a sign, and $3 sunglasses. After that, any time someone with a kid came by, I asked the kid to help color in the letters of “REGISTER TO VOTE (or change your voter registration) TODAY.”
"Draw inside the lines," the older brother directed his little sister, who was diligently destroying the "T."
Most people said they were already registered. But few knew when the primaries were.
I got to say "The Ides of March" more times than I usually do--people signing up would ask what day it was. "March 15," I said, "The Ides of March. Beware. Horrible things should happen today."
Most Spanish-speakers said they couldn’t, and a handful of middle aged black men said they couldn’t. They were ex-felons. They gave me their cell numbers so I could call back and check on their voting status, and tell them how to get re-registered.
On the sign I wrote, “Primaries May 5.”
“What’s a primary?” one woman asked. Its surprisingly hard to describe if the shared language (republican party, democratic party) isn’t there. She said she’d voted in “the small one” once before, but she signed up again anyway.
After an hour and a half it started to rain, and I’d registered 14 people and found 5 volunteers. I picked up my sign and drove away. At lunch at the Whole Foods I put my sign up next to me while I ate, but no-one came over.
We’re standing on the shoulders of eachother, I thought on the drive home. Robert came to Dean through Meetup, and organized this event, and the other leaders had been organizing with Kerry—the impossible normal tasks, like where to get voter registration forms and where to meet—had been already tackled 4 years ago, so this group could get to new levels of experimentation, and make it easy for me to do bus-stop canvassing, freestyle registration--which should make it easier for the next person.

Six years ago there is no way I’d have dared stand in front of a dollar store with registration cards. I didn’t know it was something you could do. And now, apparently, I’m committed to doing it the same time next week.