March on the Polls Highlights Early Voting

"Go! Vote! Go! Vote!" was one of the chants of the March on the Polls.

A coalition of South Bay groups organized the March on the Polls on Saturday, November 3, 2018 to not only draw attention to early voting centers, but to actually provide free rides to bring voters to vote early at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.

As the March on the Polls reached the early voting center at the Registrar of Voters on Berger Drive in San José, Assemblyman Ash Kalra and County Supervisor Cindy Chavez led the way and were received by Registrar Shannon Bushey. Participants either brought their mail-in ballots to be handed in, or went to the early voting center to cast regular ballots.

The first challenge of the March on the Polls is to get voters to actually vote.

At the rally Milan Balinton, executive director of the African American Community Service Agency, narrated that in the morning he had asked a young African American brother, "Are you registered to vote?"

The young man answered, "No, because it is rigged."

Balinton responded, "If it is rigged, then you need to unrig it by voting and getting others to vote!"

In response to people who don't bother to vote because they think it doesn't make a difference, lawyer Valerie McGinty, founder of Fund Her, pointed out, "In 1984 there was an Indiana Congressional election that was won by four votes. And in 1974 a New Hampshire U.S. Senate election was decided by two votes. Did they know it was going to be that close going in? Of course not. And you can't know that until it's too late to vote."

California is leading the nation in making it easier for people to vote by easier voter registration, multi-lingual ballots, and early voting. Santa Clara County has taken extra measures not required by the Secretary of State of California, such as providing early voting centers all around the county and paying the postage for mail-in ballots. Most other counties only provide early voting at the registrar's office, which may be a long distance away for most residents.

Santa Clara County now provides 8 early voting centers: the Registrar of Voters office, Milpitas Library, Joyce Ellington Library, Cambrian Library, Santa Clara City Library, Rinconada Library in Palo Alto, Morgan Hill City Hall, and the Willey Cultural Center in Gilroy. All early voting centers are open October 27 - November 5, 2018 from 10 am to 6 pm daily.

This is in contrast to some other states like Kansas, Georgia, and Florida that are making it harder to vote by attempting to purge voter rolls, restrict early voting, and reduce the number of polling places.

Teresa Castellanos, trustee of the San José Unified School District, reflected on how we got here: "If we look at communities of color, they have really only had 50 years of the right to vote. ... And it has been under attack for 20 years. And if we look at Native American communities, it is less than a hundred years that they have been considered U.S. citizens. And they are also under attack. And so it's really important that we remind our communities what we have fought for to make sure they have the right to vote. And the only way we can protect it is by voting."