Recruiting Democrats for fun and profit

June 12, 2006

Need some money? Forget about refinancing the house or selling Mary Kay, the real cash to be made in the next few months could be in registering voters and getting them to the polls. Turn their political ignorance into your bliss. A new career awaits.

If you’re in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee or Washington, this could be your key to success (if your state isn’t on the list, rest easy, it’ll get there).

Here’s a brief explanation from the Associated Press:

Several deep-pocketed Democratic donors, frustrated with party chairman Howard Dean effort to attract young voters, are offering up to $3 million in grants to organizations that could persuade those age 18-24 to vote Democratic. …

The donors plan to award up to a dozen grants over the next three years that could total $250,000 each to groups or individuals in 12 states.

Howard Dean isn’t doing the trick with young voters? That’s what happens when Democrats let somebody like Dean try to court the group of voters who have the best medical odds of actually being able to hear what he says.

Is this also an admission of the failure of MTV’s Rock the Vote movement, which began in 1990 in an effort to get young people to register to vote for any candidate they wished as long as it was a Democrat? Not exactly. That same story cites the fact that John Kerry won in 18-29 year olds, 54 to 45 percent, and 47 percent of people 18-24 voted in 2004, which was 11 percent higher than in 2000.

There were other pushes in years past to get out younger voters as well. In 2004, we saw the movement headed by Puffy Combs, called “Vote or Die.” Unfortunately for John Kerry, despite the increase in the number of younger voters heading to the polls, the majority of people at whom “Vote or Die” was targeted apparently chose the latter.

The Democrats have tried about everything to get the over 50 percent of people who are in the first decade of their voting eligibility off their butts. They’ve wrapped Madonna in an American flag; had rock stars speak out on their behalf while registering new voters at nitrous oxide tents at outdoor festivals across the country; and even threatened them with death-by-Puffy. After all that, still more than half of eligible young voters remain dormant.

For Democrats, it’s time to get out the checkbook for some serious incentive programs.

To get the younger voters up and active, Democrats are taking the next logical step: what appears to be a voter recruitment program driven by monetary impetus for the entrepreneurial partisan. Dare we call this a plan to play on the greed of would-be organizers? We might if they were Republicans, but since this is a Democrat plan, it’s not greed, it’s ”good deed induced corollary financial acquisitiveness.”

So, if you need cash, and now, then saddle up and get out there to recruit people 18-24 to vote Democrat and you just may catch the eye of Rappaport and Lewis. There’s money to be made fighting right-wing corporate greed.

How can we get our hands on some of this “grant” money? Let’s get busy finding people who had no intention of casting a ballot in the first place, register them, convince them that “registered” has nothing to do with the checkout lines at Old Navy, and subsequently get them to a voting machine they may or may not be able to figure out how to use in order to vote for somebody they’ve never heard of. If there’s a breakdown in any part of the process just scream “disenfranchised.”

It’s that kind of informed electorate that’s bound to take this nation to new heights while making people like us some much needed gas money.

I’d also recommend that the grant program be introduced in conjunction with the release of an XBox game called “RFK Jr.’s Grand Theft Election,” complete with 3-D voting practice (accidentally vote for Buchanan, lose 10 points) and the intense “Battle against Republicans derailing the Ohio recount” simulator.

Now let’s go mobilize young voters. Our grant awaits! Just remember that getting people registered to vote, and assuming they will vote, can be as far apart as showing people how to fill out an astronaut application form and expecting them to be on the next space shuttle mission. Nothing should outrage us more than disenfranchised astronauts.