[Northampton-GP] Newspaper Report on GRP Voter Registration Drive in Somerville

[Jim Bosman]

A lesson in how to grow the Greens

Somerville Journal, Thursday, November 6, 2003

The Somerville Green-Rainbow Party is pleased to
report the rather surprising results of a voter
registration drive we conducted from April through
September of this year. Over these six months, we
registered a modest total of 296 new voters in
Somerville (plus 150 more outside Somerville), but the
surprising news is in the party distribution of those
new Somerville voters. Democrats were 33 percent;
unenrolled or independent voters were 31.6 percent;
Greens, 29.1 percent; Republicans, 2.7 percent; and
Libertarians, 1.7 percent.

This compares with the universe of Somerville
registered voters, who, according to the Somerville
Elections Office, as of the end of October 2003 are
distributed as follows: Democrats, 53 percent;
unenrolled/Independents: 38.3 percent; Republicans,
6.4 percent; Greens, 1.6 percent; and Libertarians,
0.7 percent.

But what do our Somerville voter registration drive
numbers mean for Somerville and the rest of the state?
Our greatest surprise is in the enormous discrepancy
between the percentage of Greens we registered - 29
percent or more than 1 in 4 - and the relatively tiny
percentage of Greens - 1.6 percent of the total number
of Somerville registered voters. This compares with
the 1 in 3 voters we registered as Democrats, and the
less than 1 in 33 we registered as Republicans. We
would like to think we inspired many people to
register Green; we did indeed encourage those who
leaned Independent to register Green to help diversify
the political landscape in Massachusetts. Our
encouragement might account for the lower percentage
of Independents we registered relative to the citywide
percentage of Independents, but this probably does not
largely account for the high percentage who registered
Green. And it certainly does not account for the lower
percentage who registered Democrat or Republican
because we rarely tried to convince these voters to
register Green.

The fact that we registered most of these new voters
in Davis Square - an area widely considered a liberal
bastion - and that these voters were overwhelmingly
white (86 percent were non-Hispanic white by our
count), in their 20s and 30s, and we suspect, more
educated (college students, or college- and
graduate-educated young professionals) probably
accounts substantially for the high percentage of
Greens, and lower percentage of Democrats and
Republicans. But even this is news because it suggests
just how large the potential for growth in the
Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party is among such
voters.

To be sure, if the Somerville Democrats likewise
conducted a voter registration drive, their numbers of
new Democrats registered would likely be higher than
ours, but that only suggests the importance of party
mobilization to us. The more effort any party puts
into voter registration, the more rapidly that party's
membership will grow.

Finally, our voter registration drive shows just how
many young people who would otherwise not register are
willing to register if the "cost" of registering is
decreased substantially by making the forms available
to fill out free and readily where they pass every
day. This is a reality many Democratic and Republican
lawmakers and elections officials may prefer to ignore
given one of its clear consequences: more registered
Greens.

Jacob Chase

Paul Lachelier

Somerville Green-Rainbow Party


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