Yesterday, College Progressive posted on FLA Politics the Absentee Request Information for all 67 Counties. It sparked quite a bit of discussion about how those of us in the netroots could encourage people to vote using an absentee ballot and how we could compile this information in a format that could easily be distributed offline.
Here's an interesting piece of trivia. Did you know that Florida already has something called the Mail Ballot Election?
Title IX, Chapter 101 Sections 101.6101-101.6107 of the Florida Statutes are cited as the "Mail Ballot Election Act."
Granted its use in the state is rather limited as defined in Section 101.6102 excerpted below:
(1)(a) An election may be conducted by mail ballot if:
1. The election is a referendum election at which all or a portion of the qualified electors of one of the following subdivisions of government are the only electors eligible to vote:
a. Counties;
b. Cities;
c. School districts covering no more than one county; or
d. Special districts;
2. The governing body responsible for calling the election and the supervisor of elections responsible for the conduct of the election authorize the use of mail ballots for the election; and
3. The Secretary of State approves a written plan for the conduct of the election, which shall include a written timetable for the conduct of the election, submitted by the supervisor of elections.
(b) In addition, an annexation referendum which includes only qualified electors of one county may also be voted on by mail ballot election.
(2) The following elections may not be conducted by mail ballot:
(a) An election at which any candidate is nominated, elected, retained, or recalled; or
(b) An election held on the same date as another election, other than a mail ballot election, in which the qualified electors of that political subdivision are eligible to cast ballots.
The procedure outlined in Section 101.6103 looks pretty straightforward:
(1) Except as otherwise provided in subsection (7), the supervisor of elections shall mail all official ballots with a secrecy envelope, a return mailing envelope, and instructions sufficient to describe the voting process to each elector entitled to vote in the election not sooner than the 20th day before the election and not later than the 10th day before the date of the election. All such ballots shall be mailed by first-class mail. Ballots shall be addressed to each elector at the address appearing in the registration records and placed in an envelope which is prominently marked "Do Not Forward."
(2) Upon receipt of the ballot the elector shall mark the ballot, place it in the secrecy envelope, sign the return mailing envelope supplied with the ballot, and comply with the instructions provided with the ballot. The elector shall mail, deliver, or have delivered the marked ballot so that it reaches the supervisor of elections no later than 7 p.m. on the day of the election. The ballot must be returned in the return mailing envelope.
There were even two identical bills in the Legislature this session HB383/SB1608, both of which died in committee, to expand the provisions of the law to allow counties to conduct county elections by mail ballot:
(c) A board of county commissioners may declare that a county election shall be conducted entirely by mail ballot. The board of county commissioners shall make that declaration no later than 90 days before the date of the scheduled election.
So, on a small scale, in very specific type of elections (such as a city annexing a piece of property), Florida is already doing vote by mail.
How has in worked in practice?
Well, in terms of voter turnout the results are mixed.
A recent election in Hamilton County this past May was discouraging.
Less than a fifth of registered voters returned their mail ballots for the Economic Development Property Tax Exemption Referendum on May 29, 2007:
Total Registered Voters = 7,723
Voter Turnout Total = 1,292 (16.73%)
However, in Brevard County, an election to annex a portion of the county to the city of Melborne had better results:
Total Registered Voters 173
Total Ballots Cast 127 (73.41%)
Of course, these are two very different counties and they were voting on entirely different issues, but it does cause one to wonder what it takes to get someone to vote.
Kansasr wrote an interesting piece on FLA Politics on the Challenge of Absentee Ballots detailing examples of the numbers of people requesting absentee ballots who actually return them. It looks like roughly a quarter do not return their ballot, although a small fraction of those do end up voting at the polls instead.
This provides us with an interesting puzzle to solve that is anything but trivial.
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Some disclosure: One of the main contributors of GusWatch is a fellow manager at the Florida Progressive Coalition.
One of the many things that was discussed at the Netroots Luncheon during JJ Weekend is the need for more local and specialized blogs. The same thing was said over the weekend during the first edition of Florida Progressive Radio. I've talked about the need to set up and develop local progressive blogospheres in the past.
The blog GusWatch is an example of what we would all like to see more of...
Read More at Build Florida's DECs...
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Back in 2005, I proposed to the small Coordinated Campaign team at the Marion DEC that we should really focus on municipal races (that is, city council races.) They are incredibly small and easy to win, and they pay huge dividends down the road when we're looking for candidates at the county and state level. I was basically told to go ahead, yet due to my own greenness and naivety, I really got nowhere. Besides, I had to go attend my first semester of college at UF at the end of the summer.
Yet had I been successful then, we could have started seeing some of that effort bear fruit for the 2008 elections. You see, as I alluded to earlier, city councilmen and women make great candidates for the county commission, school board, countywide constitutional offices (tax collector, property appraiser, etc...) and state representative. The bottom line is that city councils are where we incubate and develop future candidates. This, by the way, is how Republicans slowly took power in Florida: they started at the municipal level and slowly but surely worked their way up the ladder.
In areas of the state where Democrats are currently out of power, DECs should really focus on recruiting city council candidates as a way of building the bench for future elections.
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What is the blogosphere writing about Florida? The Netroots will post a periodic roundup of what our fellow bloggers are writing.
a gnostic on dkos writes: Internal city memo of "vote caging" surfaces in Florida
doorguy on dkos writes: Florida Soldier to Sue Army to Stop FIFTH Deployment
Ron Mills on Broward's Blog: Army Pvt. Daniel Agami
kansasr posts on Build Florida's DECs: 2008 Florida House Targets
Sunny at Smashed Frog writes: YearlyKos is not All of Us
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If I didn't attend local DEC meetings, I would have no idea how the party interacts within our community. As I learned at the DFA training in Tampa, those of us to attend party meetings (or go to trainings for fun on a weekend) are strange. Normal people don't have the time, interest, or patience for such things. However, they do care about their communities and come election time they're going to be asking themselves "what have you done for me lately" of both parties. I've discovered that even "when you're strange" it isn't easy to find out what the local party is doing. So, I've come up with a few helpful suggestions to promote local party activities to both the regular and odd Democrats out there.
What prompted me to write this is that I found out that the DEC here in Leon County was participating in a 4th of July event, not from a local source, but from the regional director of one the Democratic Presidential campaigns. So, the local party does a better job of communicating among themselves and to the national party than it does to its own constituents. To quote from the movie Cool Hand Luke "What we've got here is ... failure to communicate."
So here's a list of ways DEC's can promote their events:
List Event on State Party Website
Why more DECs and Democratic clubs don't do this is beyond me. It's not difficult at all. Here, let me walk you through it.
Go to fladems.com. From the red menu at the top of the page, put your cursor over "Get Active" and select "Create or Find an Event" from the list of options.
Next, select "Plan an Event". Enter the Zip Code where the event will take place and select what type of event it is from the list of options.
If you do not already have an account, you'll be asked to create one before you can add addtional details about the event, otherwise just login, fill out the rest of the requested information and hit submit. Viola! You're Done!
List Event on Local Party Website
First of all, if you represent your local DEC and it doesn't have a website, contact the Florida Progressive Coalition. They can help you get started.
If you have a website use it! It is discouraging to see Local Party sites with little or no useful information or information that is out of date. The Leon County Democratic Party is still telling people to vote on June 26th for Suzan Franks.
If you're going to have a holiday pinic or are recruiting Democrats to serve as mentors in schools or some other community project - put it on your website.
Send Announcements to Your Public Mailing List
Many DECs have a mailing list, of sorts, to communicate with fellow committee members, but lack a more general list to send information to the public. Mailing lists are an easy and cost efficient way to get your message out.
If you represent a DEC and it doesn't have a mailing list, you can set one up on Google Groups or Yahoo Groups very easily for free or if you want something more sophisticated ask your web services provider or ask for advice from the Florida Progressive Coaltion.
Make sure that you keep it simple. On the Leon County Democratic Party's site the link to "Become a member!" and the link to "Get email updates!" asks you to fill out the same information in the form. So much information is requested to get simple email updates that its likely to discourage people from filling it out.
As you can see, the form is so long it scrolls beyond the end of the screen. The Florida Democratic Party's site has it right. It only asks people for their email address and zip code. Usually a name and email address is the only information that should be required and it should be clear to the user what information is required and what is optional.
List Event in the Local Newspaper
Most local newspapers provide a community calendar or listing of events and provide this service FREE of charge. Here in Leon County, the Tallahassee Democrat makes it easy. You simply fill out an online form and your event will appear in both the online and print edition of the paper.
Another good resource are your smaller community newspapers. In some cases, you can even submit a story and pictures about your event for publicaction.
Radio Stations and Local News
Local radio stations and your local news channels also like to provide information to their audiences about community events. Here in Tallahassee, WCTV the local CBS affiliate, has a page on their website where you can submit a community event.
Meetup.com and Social Networking Sites
Meetup.com is a great tool for building up the local party and notifying people about events. A couple of caveats. First, Meetup.com is free for visitors, but if you want to set up a Meetup.com site it will cost you $12 a month for the service. Second, if you set it up - use it! I signed up for the Tallahassee Democratic Party Meetup Group and showed up to two meetings where nobody from the local party attended.
You can also set up free group sites on places like MySpace.com, Facebook.com and Gather.com. These social networks are particularly useful if you're trying to attract more 18-35 year olds to your events.
Democratic Yahoo or Google Groups
As I mentioned earlier, Yahoo and Google provide free and easy to use mailing lists. There are tons of them that center around the topic of politics and Democratic politics in particular. Chances are, there's one based in your local area. Simply have a member of your DEC join one and post local party announcements.
We have one for Leon County on Yahoo called dem-fl-leon and the local DEC never posts anything to it. It isn't a case where they didn't know it existed. The Leon local party also has a Yahoo Group just for DEC members, which I tried to join just to see if I could get in. The Chair of the Party, politely rejected my request for membership and referred me to the aforementioned Yahoo Group.
Local Activists
Finally, the one resource for getting the word out about party events are your local activists. There's nothing like good old-fashioned word of mouth. Here in Leon we have a local veteren who organizes peace vigils and anti-war demonstrations. He's more than happy to advertise liberal events via his mailing list.
There's also local groups that are a part of the Democratic coalition such as the local chapter of the Sierra Club, the local DFA, etc., who may be able to help spread the word depending upon the nature of the event. You can also try the new Florida Progressive Calendar.
There's a wealth of resources out there to promote the party and advertise its activities in the community. These are just some of the ones that came up off the top of my head. If you have other suggestions, post them in the comments.
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