CommentsHELPLINE--In hopefully learning from the suspicious disqualification of approximately 125,000 voters in Bernie Sanders home town of Brooklyn during the New York primary on April 19th of this year, I would suggest that Californians who want to be absolutely sure they can vote and be counted in California's primary on June 7th take the preemptive precaution of avoiding any potential unpleasant surprises on election day by now checking their own voter registration status well before the May 23rd voter registration deadline.
All you need to do is go to the County Registrar of Voters office for the county you live in and click on the link "Online Voter Registration Status." If you find that for some reason you are not deemed registered, you can immediately rectify this situation by clicking on the link "Online Voter Registration" to immediately remedy the problem. So, for example, if you live in Los Angeles County, you would go to the Los Angeles Country Registrar of Voters cite and then click on either the link "Check if your registered" or "Register Now."
It is worth pointing out that unlike the restrictive voting eligibility rules in New York and elsewhere that played no small part in Bernie Sanders' losses in these states, California's somewhat open primary rules allow registered voters with "no party preference, unaffiliated, or declines to state" to vote in either the Democrat or Republican primaries.
However, this does not include people registered to the American Independent or other recognized political parties who would not be able to cross their own party line to vote for either a Democrat or Republican in the June 7th primary. Might this not be a good motivation for a Green Party member to at the very least change their registration to "declines to state" for at least the upcoming primary?
One cannot emphasize enough the marked difference between the relatively open primary process in California with the restrictive primary processes of New York and many other states where younger and first time voters, who are at the core of Bernie Sanders supporters, were blocked from voting by unnecessarily restrictive primary voting qualifications designed to purposefully limit the number of new and younger voters, who have clearly shown their disproportionate support for Sanders in the states he has carried.
It is my firm belief that the only way the corporate-donation-subsidized-politics-as-usual policies of a Hilary Clinton or her predecessors- be they Democrat or Republican- can continue to win in California and beyond from the likes of a Bernie Sanders and the revolution he has started is with a relatively small voter turnout.
Sharing the ideas expressed in this post with your own online networks can go a long way in dismantling and circumventing what up until now has been the continued corporate media success in marginalizing, devaluing and demoralizing what I believe to be the clear majority of voters, who want something more than just more political smoke and mirrors.
In a democracy- at least in theory- the majority is supposed to win isn't it?
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
So You THINK You’re Registered to Vote?
