“Cleveland VOTES Grantee Kickoff took place on June 20th. Our training covered how to properly submit voter pledges and registrations, concerns and next steps regarding the voter purge in Ohio, and the logistics side of voter registration. We also answered covered general questions as it relates to nonpartisan voter engagement.
Due to the voter purge, Grantees are predicating their work with a status check for people who may have already registered, and integrating voter registration into their work, i.e. clinical and employment agency intake. Cleveland Votes is focused on populations that are mainly black/brown and want engagement as well as accessibility. Pop up voter registration is the strategy we will be implementing in order for our demographic to be reached, along with multi-prong integration at various social service agencies, while providing technical assistance and facilitating in partner collaborations. Our technical assistance has gleaned information that will elevate issues relevant to challenges and obstacles as they relate to voter turnout, i.e. housing insecurity and an disengaged employment sector among others.
A few of the upcoming campaigns that our cdc’s are leading around voter mobilization includes Slavic Village Votes and Black Votes Matter, which is run by Slavic Village and Burten, Bell, Carr Development, respectively.
When it comes to our press release, we were asked by several entities to arrange for volunteers to come to their events and facilitate voter registration. Entities have been providing our volunteers from the pool of grantees and noting challenges that they may be facing throughout the process of getting people to sign up to be a registered voter. These challenges include: “housing security, people not having an accurate address to use in order to vote, college students moving away for a temporary amount of years possibly holding two addresses and the myth that individuals with felonies or misdemeanors cannot vote”. 