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Hope Springs Free Voter Photo ID Project in Georgia and North Carolina Update [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-09-19  

Hope Springs from Field PAC [website] was created to fill vacuums. The missing pieces that help Democrats win on Election Day. Over the last 4 years, Early Organizing has been our core mission ever since victory in the 2021 Georgia Senate Runoffs. But what that means in every Swing State is different. In Georgia and North Carolina, part of that core mission is helping voters, who don’t have one, obtain a free Voter Photo ID so they can vote.

We have now organized and conducted over 237 (Free) Voter ID days in Georgia and North Carolina counties at their county Elections offices. The number is slightly exaggerated (meaning higher than we though necessary) since Hope Springs was asked in both states to schedule smaller numbers of recipients at a time so as to not attract MAGA attention and/or “protests” at these county facilities. So instead of organizing Voter ID days for up to 248 voters in a county office at a time, we now try to limit it to under 60 at a time, or four times as often. But, outside of a couple of counties in Georgia and North Carolina, abiding by these requests has built up good will and free exchange of information with the local elections offices.

And, by doing so, we haven’t seen any interaction (or any reaction) from MAGA supporters trying to disrupt voters from obtaining their free Voter Photo IDS. It was a good call.

Hope Springs from Field believes in not only in encouraging Super Compliance for voters, but in making these voters feel safe and free from embarrassment in doing so. In Georgia and North Carolina, we’ve been organizing Free Voter Photo ID Days at their local Registrar’s or Board of Elections offices. And we’ve been doing this from the beginning. On June 12th, 2021, Hope Springs volunteers began canvassing in the Black Belt of Georgia, repeating our steps in the Georgia Senate Runoff, with a special emphasis on helping voters without the newly required photo IDs to obtain them. In 2022, we had to expand this effort into North Carolina after the (state) Supreme Court reversed itself on North Carolina’s photo ID decision.

Everywhere that Hope Springs volunteers canvassed, we’ve informed voters of the new voter laws and requirements, making sure they were aware of the promise that these photo ID cards would be available without cost at their local Elections office.

This was a shared responsibility. People who don’t have a photo ID generally have reasons why they don’t have one. And often there is a cost involved that the voter can’t afford. In my years of helping people get IDs in order to vote, i can remember one voter whose cost for all the documentation she needed to get an ID was well over $300. Legislating a “Free Photo ID” rarely means it is free to the voter. But we have often found, in preparing a voter to obtain their “Free” Photo ID, that our Black Churches partners and even some Divine Nine chapters eager to help voters out in this regard. Like i said, shared responsibility. We go to great lengths to make sure that voters have what they need to cast their ballots and have their vote counted.

Our 237 (free) Voter Photo ID days have helped 54,851 voters get the required photo identification they needed to vote in their state. 117 of those Voter ID days have been in North Carolina, helping 23,773 voters obtain their free ID; 31,078 voters have gotten their free Photo ID in Georgia. 79.7% of these voters were African-American and 64.3% were older than 60 years old. 69.7% of them were female.

More than a third of the people who have participated in these Voter ID efforts were found at their door. Most were found by our partner Black Churches in their own community outreach. But one of the things that we have found is that almost all these voters would not have known about this requirement without our efforts organizing around this issue. Our experience in voting, campaigns and elections makes a difference here.

Hope Springs from Field has been knocking on doors, serving as a resource to Elections Committees in Black Churches and partnering with local civics and civil rights groups to raise awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights. We are thinking about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote.

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 PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. Election Protection was central to the Obama primary effort in 2008 because we were running against a party favorite with strong roots in state and local party organizations and we needed to appeal to voters outside that framework. We are returning to the old school basics: looking for patterns, addressing issues that have come up in the past and making sure authorities know about issues that are likely to (or even just may) come up in each election.

As far as I know, Hope Springs from Field is the only entity focused on Swing States taking this wholistic approach to GOTV, especially in minority communities. All the pieces of the puzzle have to be addressed, and we are doing that.

But there is one surprising fact in this regard. Very few of the voters that we have registered in our special voter registration project targeting African-American neighborhoods in Georgia, North Carolina and northern Florida for several years now, needed Photo IDs from the county elections offices. They were good.

Georgia Counties with historically higher rates of lynchings are redder

We’ve been focusing on registering voters in counties with historically high (prior) levels of lynching ever since we were exposed to Jhacova Williams’ work on race and voter registration. Williams wrote that “Black Americans who reside in counties in the South where there was a higher number of lynchings from 1882 to 1930 have lower voter registration today.” We are trying to replicate this work in Texas, as well, but without the benefit of her groundbreaking work.

Hope Springs has been using this data to target Voter Registration efforts in those counties in Georgia, North Carolina and Florida (and trying to replicate these results in Texas). We canvass these areas with the additional goals of luring people to register to vote, finding mentors to help them through the entire voting process and building understanding or recognition that there are cultural reasons why and how voting has been discouraged in their community. It’s an incredibly eye-opening experience for both the volunteer and the voters with whom we’ve engaged.

N Carolina Counties with historically higher rates of lynchings are redder

But her theory about the connection between higher rates of extrajudicial murders and voter suppression is born out by the fact that African-Americans participate in other government services (like obtaining a Driver’s License or other forms of photo identification) at apparently higher rates than African-Americans in other counties.

We consider this effort to be correcting tragic historical errors, reaching back to the Declaration of Independence and it’s promise that All Men (& Women) are Created Equal. It has become a labor of love for both organizers and volunteers, as well as some of the outside volunteers who have been recruited to knock on doors in this regard.

Hope Springs from Field volunteers believe that, if we can reverse this historical trend, not just by voter registration but voter mobilization, we can reverse a couple of these less Republican Congressional seats in these 3 states, but especially in North Carolina. Still, our (overwhelmingly) African-American volunteers who canvass in those counties, they are (admittedly) less interested in reversing gerrymandered seats than in reversing historical inequities. Our goals are not necessarily their goals, but this being a mutually beneficial project.

But we are on top of this. Republicans try to narrow the electorate by passing Photo ID laws and we use our canvassing and partnerships with minority communities to organize massive Free Voter Photo ID days at Elections offices. Republicans remove voters “from the rolls en masse” and we target those who’ve been removed to correct the error with the Elections offices or re-register them to vote. Sure, these are really terrible things to be doing to fellow Americans but we don’t have to just take it. The courts aren’t our only recourse, and they are definitely not an immediate recourse. Getting our voters out to vote and cast a ballot that counts is a year-round and requires constant vigilance. Early Organizing allows us to address this. We have power — and we need to exercise it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/19/2269470/-Hope-Springs-Free-Voter-Photo-ID-Project-in-Georgia-and-North-Carolina-Update?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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