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July 12, 2004
Massive Voter Registration Drives
"If you get enough people fired up, there's no telling what might happen."
-- Vernon Clarke (Reporting from Philadelphia on the NAACP Annual Convention)
It's rather sad that I find myself bad-mouthing the NAACP. I can't remember the last time I gave them the benefit of the doubt. The last thing I ever hoped was that in the wake of multiculturalism, they would actually become something for 'people of color'. Alas, they lack the imagination. I hear the Legal Defense Fund still does good wonky work, but the general org - hack central.
So it appears that their big secret weapon is 'massive voter registration'. No disrespect to the objects but this is scraping the bottom of the barrell. Who is not registered to vote? Most likely the people who don't care. It's one thing to raise new ideas which encourage people to participate in the political process, but it's another to have the end result be voter registration with the presumption that all blacks are going to dislodge the sitting President. So where is the NAACP the other 4 years? Giving awards to R. Kelly.
I'm not going to explain the math that demonstrates that voter registration drives targeting African Americans has diminishing returns every year. Even if they had been successful at it every time (hmm) there's a fixed amount of bang for those bucks. After all these years, they might have come up with something better. Tsk.
Posted by mbowen at July 12, 2004 04:19 PM
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� Massive Voter Registration Drives from Booker Rising
Cobb bad-mouths the NAACP on its election-year voter registration drives, which he views as having diminishing returns each year. He argues that folks least likely to vote are folks who don't care about politics. Cobb also takes issue with the NAACP ... [Read More]
Tracked on July 13, 2004 04:04 PM
Comments
I don't call them "The Dinosaur" for nothing.
Posted by: La Shawn at July 13, 2004 11:43 AM
Yeah but dinosaurs are fun to watch because they're powerful and they can smash things.
Posted by: Cobb at July 13, 2004 12:12 PM
Here's a thought. How about the NAACP wake up a join the 21st century by at least playing footsie with Republicans. To the extent that government is the answer for black people as a whole, the only way to get politicians to work for you is for them to realize that your vote could actually be lost.
Posted by: golasso at July 13, 2004 12:38 PM
Maybe their strategy is this...If a person isn't registered to vote and knows nothing about the political process or the candidates, BUT someone from the NAACP gets the person to register to vote and admonishes them to vote, gee, who should they vote for? Sooooooo the person thinks, Hmmmm, well the NAACP registered me and they are all about Black people and Black people are all about Democrats (or non-Bush) so maybe I should put 2 and 2 together (sterotypically, of course) and vote Democratic! Viola!
Posted by: Sandra at July 14, 2004 07:34 AM