More than 8,500 Granite Staters from across New Hampshire descended on the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester Sunday night for a rally with Barack, Michelle and special guest Oprah Winfrey.
The event added a boost of momentum and organizational strength to a campaign that is quickly gaining ground in New Hampshire. In the week preceding the event:
- More than 650 new volunteers signed up to help the campaign
- More than 500 supporters volunteered in the lead-up to the rally
- More than 250 volunteers worked on-site at the event
- More than 2,300 new New Hampshire supporters joined the campaign
Tim Foley
Proud to be a NH staff member for Barack Obama’s movement for change.
Please share widely!
Obama is doing a great job harvesting names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and cell phone numbers from anyone who comes to these events. All candidacies are trying to do this, but Obama is doing extremely well at it. Todd Beeton — hardly an Obamfrey maniac, writes up the details at Mydd.
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Stuff I don’t say here, I say here.
Obama’s attempt to convince non-Iowan supporters to caucus for him in Iowa may obviate the need to be popular among Iowans.
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p>As reported in the Washington Post and elsewhere, Obama’s campaign is sending out flyers that tell college students “If you are not from Iowa, you can come back for the Iowa caucus and caucus in your college neighborhood.”
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p>Iowa allows same-night caucus registration without requiring proof of residence in the state. While Clinton, Dodd, Richardson, and others are warning their supporters away unless they possess an Iowa pedigree, Obama isn’t.
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p>Dean of Iowa political reporting David Yepsen has responded in the Des Moines Register that “Maybe we should call these the Illinois caucuses.” Pissing off Yepsen is never a good idea, and setting the stage to taint any victory in Iowa is a worse one.
Biden, like Dodd and Clinton, is also suggesting college students can’t vote in Iowa, but at least Richardson seems to not been actively pushing this like the other 3.
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p>see http://www.bluehampshire.com/s… for more
for your statement comment that “Biden, like Dodd and Clinton, is also suggesting college students can’t vote in Iowa.” Just curious.
The dKos article on this topic has most of the information (the Blue Hampshire link just links to article and discusses) and has a quote from the Biden press release on this:
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The section you posted does not mention Hillary Clinton. Here is the quote from her campaign contained in the dKos article you linked to:
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p>”The Iowa caucus is so special because it is based on Iowa values. We believe that every Iowan and every student who is eligible to caucus in Iowa should do so and we hope they do.”
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p>Hardly a suggestion that students cannot vote in Iowa. The dKos poster’s spin on this quote is disingenuous. Also, the story about the student calling one of the Clinton campaign offices and not getting a call back indicates the dKos poster has not been involved in very many campaigns at the grassroots level. The people answering the phones in most local campaign offices are volunteers, not campaign representatives.
When I moved here to Brighton to attend college, I changed my voter registration, so I wouldn’t have to bother with an absentee ballot. The first chance I got to exercise my right to vote in my new neighborhood was in the spring 2005 MA house special election to replace Brian Golden.
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p>I, and dozens of other rent-paying, tax-paying Brighton residents who happen to be Boston University undergraduates were challenged at the polls by members of the Boston Ward 22 Democratic Committee, who told us we did not have the right to vote, though we were registered. They managed to verbally intimidate a number of people into leaving the polls without voting with threats of prosecution, possibly influencing the result of the race, which was decided by 40 votes.
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p>I approached both my city councilor and my state rep about what had happened, and both were incredibly helpful. My councilman actually joined me for a meeting with the head of the Boston elections department, who promised to resolve the problem ASAP by moving the BPD officers who had been stationed inside the buildings where the voting took place to outside as well.
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p>We’ve never had another problem like that since.
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p>So, I simply have this to say to ANYONE who is registered to vote where they live, but is told they are not allowed to: DONT BUY IT.
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p>Exercise your constitutional right to vote.
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p>NO ONE can take that away from you.
You and your friends were properly registered voters unfamiliar to an insular group of people at the polls, and I regret they chose that path. However, you were not violating the law.
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p>It is easy to see that mailer as encouraging supporters to violate the law and take advantage of the honor system used in the caucuses.
particularly young voters who are inclined to vote for Dems.
The Iowa law is very clear about eligibility for registration. “Out of state” students can register where they reside. The only restriction is that they not vote in two jurisdictions. Iowa makes it easy, as it should, to get residents to participate by allowing registration even on the day of the caucuses.
You’re on the wrong side of this one, sabutai, all the left-wing groups in Iowa come down on the side of full rights for all residents. Even the Democratic Party of Iowa gets it right.
Hillary Clinton needs to repudiate this strategy asap. It smacks of the disenfranchising efforts of the Republicans.
has a strategy to stop students from voting in Iowa. Sounds like Repbulican smear tactics.
We’re not talking about if college students are allowed to vote, we’re talking about requiring citizens to vote near where they live. It is not disenfranchisement to suggest you vote where you live, it’s preserving democratic values.
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p>The problem isn’t the idea that Obama wants his people to caucus for him, the problem is that Obama is leaving the door open for his supporters who live in Iowa to caucus for him, even if they are registered elsewhere.
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p>(And your attempt to shoehorn a Hillary boogeyman into this makes no sense.)
So, assuming your Iowa college student stops at the voter reg. table first on the way in on caucus day, and changes his/her registration from the state where he/she grew up to reflect where they live now in Iowa, where is the problem?
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p>In fact, I’ve always heard that my above scenario was one of the strongest arguments we’ve got for same-day voter reg: it will increase the number of transient young people who vote, which wouldl be good because
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p>1) higher turnout = healthier democracy, and
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p>b) younger people overwhelmingly vote for Democrats
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p>look, believe me, there are mannnyyyy people I know and go to school with who care about politics enough to vote, just not enough to go to city hall 6 weeks before election day to re-register every time they change addresses. If we modify the registration process to make it less of a pain in the rear, more of them will vote. period.
because no proof of residence is required.
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p>The problem is non-Iowans attempting skewing the results of a caucus designed for Iowans. The fact that certain campaigns are publicly encouraging FRAUD is very telling of their respect for the democratic process.
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p>I doubt, though, that a significant number of out-of-state college students would stay or return to Iowa during their breaks in order to caucus for Obama.
look, believe me, there are mannnyyyy people I know and go to school with who care about politics enough to vote, just not enough to go to city hall 6 weeks before election day to re-register every time they change addresses
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p>is easily handled. Get the town clerks to set up (re-)registration tables on college campuses for a couple of days prior to the end of the registration period.
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p>I’m somewhat learly of allowing transients to potentially control a town’s election results, but that’s another issue.