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Registration Trouble
John Judis's ground war article highlights an interesting GOP logistical problem:
In 2000, Gore won Oregon by 6,765 votes. Democratic registration campaigns among younger voters in Portland's Multnomah County should help Kerry win the state, even with a gay marriage referendum designed to bring out the Christian conservative vote. From January to August of this year, Democrats registered 16,897 more new voters than Republicans. Republican gains were primarily in rural areas dominated by the timber industry, while Democrats gained 14,189 new registrants in Multnomah County compared to exactly 90 for Republicans.Now, clearly, there were more than 90 unregistered Republicans in Multnomah County which had 660,486 people in the 2000 census and experienced 12 percent population growth between 1990 and 2000. What happened here is that the Republicans didn't try to register new voters there. And you can hardly blame them. Walk around a major urban area and there's no obvious way to identify who the Republicans are. The African-Americans and Latinos you find are going to be overwhelmingly Democrats, but most of the white people are Democrats, too. As a result, Democrats can safely push to register minorities, and then if they run out, start looking for white folks, especially students, and single women. Republicans would need to put an awful lot of thought into how to identify their supporters before launching an urban registration drive. So they don't do it, instead they head for rural areas and the exurbs.
That would all be fine except for the fact that an awful lot of Republicans live in big cities simply because big cities contain so many people. New York City has a 4-to-1 Democratic registration advantage, but it also has 8 million residents, so that "one" Republican represents an awful lot of votes in absolute terms. But Republicans don't have any good way to tap those those Republicans with registration drives and GOTV efforts. As a result, you get ridiculous things like the nine to one new registrant edge in Philadelphia that Atrios flagged this morning, and the absurd 157-1 edge in Portland that Judis is talking about.
October 5, 2004 | Permalink
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» The Democratic Registration Advantage from The Cardinal Collective
Matthew Yglesias find a particular problem for the GOP: John Judis's ground war article highlights an interesting GOP logistical problem: In 2000, Gore won Oregon by 6,765 votes. Democratic registration campaigns among younger voters in Portland's Mult... [Read More]
Tracked on Oct 5, 2004 1:36:08 PM
» Ha ha ha from Chrononautic Log
That’s the mean-spirited ha ha ha, mind you, not the jolly one. Taking note of the overwhelming advantage Democrats seem to have in urban voter registration, Matthew Yglesias observes: Now, clearly, there were more than 90 unregistered Republican... [Read More]
Tracked on Oct 5, 2004 4:47:38 PM
Comments
How, exactly, do you know that most whites in big cities are liberal too? Or is this just more BS like the rest of your site? Pray tell, O genius.
Posted by: David | Oct 5, 2004 12:37:48 PM
Yes, that's a serious problem for the GOP; They have a slight edge over the Democratic party over almost the entire land area of the US, countered by the Democrats having a huge advantage over them in the urban centers. It also hurts with get out the vote drives, because if you're driving a van around looking for voters in rural North Dakota, you've got to drive a LONG ways to fill up the van...
But are you sure this isn't contributing to the registration edge, too?
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/summit/1096018375266600.xml
or
http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/localstoryN02FRAUD.htm
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Oct 5, 2004 12:39:21 PM
Gee, my heart bleeds for them.
Posted by: Matt Davis | Oct 5, 2004 12:41:12 PM
Foolish person upthread.
God knows what the GOP does in my county, but our (Dem) registration is punctiliously non-partisan: you should have seen us trying to answer a candidate with questions about Kerry determined not to just ceck the website.
Everywhere I look, I see Dems interested in civics and the GOP not so much these days. I quote the President of the United States: "Register Republicans, register independents, registre discerning Democrats like Zell Miller." This is the view of the *President of the United States on voter registration. But then, he lost in 2000 so who am I kidding.
Posted by: John Isbell | Oct 5, 2004 12:57:58 PM
Another explanation for the disparity is that people are, you know, angry at the president for some reason, and are registering to vote to express their disapproval.
Posted by: Chance the Gardener | Oct 5, 2004 1:12:20 PM
Well, here in San Mateo County, CA, the Democrats will register anyone who happens by, regardless of their intended affiliation. The Republicans, however, will only register new Republicans.
Posted by: LarryB | Oct 5, 2004 1:13:01 PM
How, exactly, do you know that most whites in big cities are liberal too?
Umm...because of that stuff he just said? Voting patterns? Common knowledge? That sort of thing.
Posted by: chilly | Oct 5, 2004 1:16:11 PM
Matt, I'm not sure that Multnomah County is a very good jumping-off point for national comparisons. While there are undoubtedly more than 90 unregistered Republicans, this county is incredibly Democrat-saturated. So not only is it extremely difficult to identify Republicans (most of whom go to nearby Washington & Clackamas counties), but Republican groups simply don't come around here because...well, what's the point? There is none. The same probably cannot be said in Philly, NYC or other democratic-leaning areas, at least not to the same extent.
Posted by: sarah | Oct 5, 2004 1:26:18 PM
Well, here in San Mateo County, CA, the Democrats will register anyone who happens by, regardless of their intended affiliation. The Republicans, however, will only register new Republicans.
I'm pretty sure that anyone who accepts voter registration material must accept it from anyone who wishes to register, even if they advertise, for example, "Republican register here".
Posted by: cmdicely | Oct 5, 2004 1:43:35 PM
"Well, here in San Mateo County, CA, the Democrats will register anyone who happens by, regardless of their intended affiliation."
Yeah, ACORN in Florida was collecting registration papers from everyone, without respect to party, too. It's just that if you didn't register as a Democrat, they threw them out without telling you, instead of turning them in, so that you'd get a nasty suprise on election day.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Oct 5, 2004 1:43:42 PM
I have to say that just because you aren't popular with white people, registering minorities isn't the answer. Maybe in this election, it will be. But long term you are just driving more white people to be Republican.
Posted by: Chad | Oct 5, 2004 2:05:26 PM
I'm pretty sure that anyone who accepts voter registration material must accept it from anyone who wishes to register, even if they advertise, for example, "Republican register here".
Laws are for democrats, not republicans. Here where I live (Washoe County, NV) we have been busting ass registering democrats and have numbers similar to those mentioned for Multnomah County. We have actually registered more rebublicans than they have. Nevada has changed from majority republican registration to majority democratic.
Last night on our local news there was a story about large numbers of illegitimate voter registration forms (non-existant addresses, names like "John Doe") and they are all republican. This appears to validate the rumors I have heard that they are hiring homeless people to register republicans, and they only pay for republican registrations.
Posted by: The Bobs | Oct 5, 2004 2:12:53 PM
You suppose it will finally get bad enough this year, that we can call a halt to the arms race of fraudulent registrations, and get some real ballot security? You know, like actually requiring people to prove that they're who they say they are when they register, that they're legal citizens, that sort of thing?
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Oct 5, 2004 2:24:41 PM
You suppose it will finally get bad enough this year, that we can call a halt to the arms race of fraudulent registrations, and get some real ballot security? You know, like actually requiring people to prove that they're who they say they are when they register, that they're legal citizens, that sort of thing?
From where I sit, the bigger problem is the illegal disenfranchisement of eligible voters, such as the overly broad Florida felon purge. Or the last-minute shuffling of polling places in urban areas. Or sending "investigators" to intimidate elderly black voters. Or suddenly getting fussy about the weight of paper that a registration form is printed on. Or deciding to only count some races on provisional ballots.
And just how is someone supposed to prove they're a citizen? Not everybody has a passport, and a birth certificate plus a current government-issued ID is just unrealistic.
Sounds like somebody wants to keep the wrong kind of people from voting.
BTW, as far as I know, it's perfectly OK to do partisan voter registration drives in CA. IIRC, there was an article in the SF Chron about it.
Posted by: LarryB | Oct 5, 2004 2:45:08 PM
Yes, that IS the standard Democratic response to demands that people actually prove they're who they claim to be when they register to vote: That it's an attempt to disenfranchise or intimidate people. It's that that convinces me that Democrats are fairly certain that they're more guilty on this score than Republicans. Otherwise they'd be more eager to stop it.
Look, letting people who don't have a legal right to vote, like illegal aliens, or your poodle, register to vote, is itself a form of disenfranchisement of the people who are legally voting; If I vote for candidate "X", and some guy who never passed through customs, let alone bothered becoming a citizen, votes for candidate "Y", I've been disenfranchised as surely as though somebody with a gun had barred me from my polling place. More insidious, really, because at least if THAT happened, I'd KNOW that I'd been cheated.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Oct 5, 2004 3:08:47 PM
I don't buy this. Who are these unregistered urban Republicans? What is their demographic information? Are they rich? They probably vote. Are they religious? They probably vote.
Posted by: biztheclown | Oct 5, 2004 3:40:37 PM
Dear David the Coprophagic (why are you eating this up if it is all BS?):
Matt did NOT say whites in big cities are liberals, he said Democrats. I think registration proves this. Eat up.
Posted by: epistemology | Oct 5, 2004 3:49:08 PM
There are African-Americans and Latinos in Portland?
Since when?
That would be news.
More relevantly, it'll take, what? four mega-church congregations in the ex-urbs to make up the difference in Portland?
Posted by: Thomas | Oct 5, 2004 4:45:02 PM
I don't know what the laws are like in most states, but here in Virginia there's no law that I'm aware of that says you can't express a partisan affiliation when you're registering people to vote, so while you may target limited efforts at reliable voting blocs, you can easily register people of your own party without doing that. You can't refuse a registration application (we have nonpartisan registration anyway), but if you have a table out with Kerry signs, 99.99% of the people who will come anywhere near you are Democrats. If you knock on doors and say you're with the Democratic party and then register people who are willing to open the door and talk to you, 99.99% of the people you register are Democrats.
The Republicans can do exactly the same thing. The reason they haven't is this is one of the few areas where manpower trumps money. Thousands of volunteers who have never been involved in a political campaign before have been out in areas across the country for months signing up new Democratic voters, working with the Democratic Party, ACT, Democracy for America, the AFL-CIO, and local grassroots groups. The Republicans, for all their talk of energizing their base, have nothing to compete with that.
Posted by: Redshift | Oct 5, 2004 4:48:10 PM
You suppose it will finally get bad enough this year, that we can call a halt to the arms race of fraudulent registrations, and get some real ballot security?
Shouldn't someone establish that the fraudulent registrations (other than scamming parties that are paying for registrations of their party, which is illegal, anyway) actually create a significant practical problem at the ballot box?
You know, like actually requiring people to prove that they're who they say they are when they register, that they're legal citizens, that sort of thing?
"Innocent until proven guilty" works for me, absent substantial evidence of a serious problem that a proposed reform has an good chance of actually addressing without creating a greater problem.
Posted by: cmdicely | Oct 5, 2004 4:53:25 PM
Look, letting people who don't have a legal right to vote, like illegal aliens, or your poodle, register to vote, is itself a form of disenfranchisement of the people who are legally voting
No, its not.
Letting them actually vote arguably would be, but registration and voting are two different things.
But no one proposing ballot security has done this:
1) Demonstrated a substantial problem with illegal voting,
2) Proposed a plan which would credibly deal with that problem, and
3) Proposed a plan which would, while doing #2, fail to create a bigger problem.
And, in fact, most of the proposals I've seen (requiring non-free state-issued ID, for instance, to be presented at the time of voting) are variations on the unconstitutional poll tax.
Posted by: cmdicely | Oct 5, 2004 4:57:34 PM
four mega-church congregations in the ex-urbs to make up the difference in Portland?
Except that the mega-church congregations are probably already registered and regular voters, so would offer no or little opportunity for gain.
Posted by: cmdicely | Oct 5, 2004 4:58:28 PM
Well, Cm, I can point you to at least a couple elections where we know that there were enough fraudulent votes cast to change who won. But you'd not be interested, as those cases involved Democrats stealing elections, not Republicans.
Seriously, folks: Until Democrats stop reacting this way to proposals to make sure only citizens can vote, and only once, you'll continue to have precisely zero credibility when you complain about ballot fraud.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Oct 5, 2004 5:03:25 PM
Brett, I could point you to evidence that you're wearing women's underwear, but you'd just go into massive denial about it, so I won't waste my time.
It's a shame, because it's really sexy underwear.
Posted by: John Isbell | Oct 5, 2004 5:37:03 PM
Well, Cm, I can point you to at least a couple elections where we know that there were enough fraudulent votes cast to change who won.
Okay, start pointing.
And then point to a proposal which doesn't cause worse problems than those it can credibly address -- for starters, one which doesn't impose a de facto poll tax.
Until Democrats stop reacting this way to proposals to make sure only citizens can vote, and only once, you'll continue to have precisely zero credibility when you complain about ballot fraud.
I don't see why demanding that proposed reforms actually are things that have some credible expectation of addressing real problems without creating greater problems reduces credibility. Could you explain that to me, please?
Posted by: cmdicely | Oct 5, 2004 5:59:42 PM
