While ACORN's record-breaking voter registration campaign - and the partisan attacks which followed - have been much in the news lately, ACORN members and organizers are hard at work conducting extensive Get Out the Vote programs to make sure that ACORN members, new registrants, immigrant citizens, young people, and infrequent voters in low-income and minority communities participate in this historic election. Below are some highlights of our work:
All of ACORN's voter mobilization programs target new registrants and infrequent voters. Many voters reached by these GOTV initiatives will have been registered by ACORN's 2007-8 voter registration drive, which collected 1.3 million registration applications.
ACORN has focused its 2008 Voter Education and Mobilization Program on three sets of voters: 1) those who participated in only one of three recent major elections; 2) inactive voters registered since 2004; and 3) citizens registered since November 2006
Between the different tracks of this program, ACORN organizers and members in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Ohio, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and other states are working to engage more than 250,000 voters with at least two personal contacts (one phone, one door-knock) between now and Election Day.
In addition, phone and mail programs will reach hundreds of thousands of new and infrequent voters in 11 states - including many of ACORN's new registrants - to encourage voting and provide polling place information to new voters.
ACORN members and canvassers are working to distribute more than half a million fliers and door-hangers with the 1-866-OUR-VOTE and www.govote.org (www.veavotar.com for Spanish speakers) election protection number and website to help ACORN's constituents understand their voting rights, bring proper identification, and find their polling place.
In addition to our overall program, ACORN is working through the We Are America Alliance to focus on Latino, Asian, and New American communities in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and Washington. ACORN canvassers are making multiple passes in targeted neighborhoods, with supplemental phone calls and mail pieces repeating the messages communicated in-person. In Colorado and Arizona, our programs will mobilize voters to increase turn-out and help defeat harmful ballot initiatives: a predatory lending deregulation bill (AZ), four anti-labor ballot Initiatives (CO), and an affirmative action ban (CO).
Voter Education efforts about predatory lending, jobs, the economy, and other economic justice issues will help diverse voters in MN, NM, CO, MI, and elsewhere make informed choices regarding ballot initiatives (such as state income tax decreases that will negatively affect public education, right to unionize measures, and state amendments on predatory lending practices) and public policy so they can later hold politicians accountable to ACORN constituents and other low-income voters.
ACORN is also conducting a study, assisted by the Analyst Institute, that will measure the effectiveness of large-scale canvass and phone voter mobilization programs around the country, representing the largest research analysis of its kind.
We want to assure you that partisan attacks will NOT interfere with ACORN members' determination to involve low-income, minority, and new American voters across the country. On the contrary, our members are more determined than ever to make our voices heard this year and in all election years to come.
You can help us make sure that our voices are heard by going here and giving a donation of whatever you can afford! And you can still stand with ACORN against the attacks from the Right by going here to sign the petition telling John McCain to stop the smears and by watching and forwarding around ACORN's first-ever TV commercial, which aims to fight voter suppression from the McCain campaign.
Together we can ensure the biggest turnout in American history and change the course of our country.