Mixing up old-school with 2.0 voter registration tech

(NNPA) - With most voter registration deadlines only days away for the historic 2008 presidential election, record numbers of new voters are still expected to register and vote for the first time.Many of those new voters will be young African Americans, casting ballots in their first presidential election.

To facilitate and encourage those potential voters, new NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous unveiled an online voter registration initiative this week for a generation weaned on the technology of the Internet.

The initiative, Upload to Uplift, uses Web 2.0 technology to encourage visitors to register and upload the e-mail addresses of family and friends who are not registered. Jealous said the new initiative is the perfect way to reach out to the estimated 8 million unregistered Black voters.

"We took a standard voter registration form and hooked it up to the technology," Jealous said. "People can go online and basically canvas their friends through the Web and encourage their friends to vote. This is my third decade of doing voter registration and this is beyond the bare knuckle, walking the streets tactics. This technology is one more way to reach the 8 million Blacks who are not registered to vote. This combines old school NAACP tactics with new school technology. We're very excited about this."

According to Jealous, who has been doing voting registration since he was 14, visitors to the NAACP Web site, www.naacp.org, can connect to the Upload to Uplift link and complete, print and mail the registration form before the organization's Oct. 6 deadline.

Corporate, community partners and bloggers are also encouraged to download the widget and place it on their site.

"The technology will capture information like e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers and individuals will get text messages encouraging them to vote," Jealous said. "The NAACP has had a history of transforming this country and we will transform the electoral process. We can do it by registering every last voter, verifying every last voter, mobilizing every last voter, protecting every last voter and ensuring that every last vote is counted."

While unprecedented numbers of African Americans and young people are expected to register in this year's election, voters in swing states like Pennsylvania are going to have a tremendous impact on the 2008 election.

"People say that the Black vote is a shoe in for the Democratic Party, but especially in swing states that should not be taken for granted," Jealous said. "Swing voters need to be motivated and anyone doing voter registration in those states needs to fight hard for the Black vote. There should be kitchen table discussions and community meetings discussing the needs of Black voters, which aren't insignificant at all."

Jealous also said the 8 million unregistered Blacks were transients, people who moved around a lot and forgot to re-register, college students, young people who are not rooted in a particular community and also people who might be confused about the status of their right to vote.

"For instance, people in California who are in jail and awaiting trial might not know that until they are convicted of a crime, they still have the right to vote," Jealous said.

According to the United States Census Bureau, only 69 percent of African Americans are registered compared to 75 percent of their White counterparts.

"Every 20 years or so there's a major election - the 2008 presidential election," Jealous said. "We see this as our responsibility to get as many people as possible engaged in the political process.