Successful Voter Mobilization Efforts:
Case Study of Connecticut Community Efforts

M. Saud Anwar MD, MPH, FCCP.

The Pakistani-American Public Affairs Committee, CT Chapter initiated a process in Connecticut where they have opened their own full time campaign office. This office efforts included setting up a coordinated system of:

A) Identifying the registered voters,
B) Increasing the new registered voters,
C) Educating the voters.
D) Educating the candidates
E) Mobilizing the vote on the election day.
F) Providing support to candidates who agreed with our concerns and issues
G) Post election grass root efforts to increase preparation of the community for future elections and local and national challenges.

The initial phase of the efforts required setting up and completing an office with volunteers, workers, helpers and interns. No project can occur without the dedication of focused individuals with a goal of mobilizing and educating the community. We as a community have been blessed with a large team of effective and efficient workers.

Our PHASE I initial efforts included getting information of all the registered voters of the community. This was further enhanced using other measures and accumulating the databases of most of the organizations Masajids, and community networks.  from this effort and also getting the current databases based on different backgrounds together. 

The second half of the PHASE I activities included setting up of Town coordinators of essentially most towns of CT. Voter registration messages were sent to them via automated messages in their own ethnic languages to inform the eligible voters to register to vote, and educating them and identifying their needs and support for specifically for the Election Day. The community is subsequently being helped further to identify a mechanism to have voter mobilization on the Election Day.

The town coordinators played an important role in cleaning and improving on the existing databases. They also helped encouraged the un registered eligible voters to register. A process was initiated to help educate the people on issues and candidates. All the candidates were informed bout the initiative and invited to meet with us in our office.

PHASE II included reaching out to the candidates essentially partly in a concomitant manner. Multiple meeting were held with candidates in a non -partisan way to help understand their perspectives, but more importantly educate them on our concerns , issues and need for policy initiatives. These meetings included meetings with Congressman Larson, Congressman Simmons, Candidate Dianne Farrell, Candidate Chris Murphy, Candidate Joe Courtney, and Senatorial Candidate Ned Lamont. Other meeting were held again in a non partisan manner with the local representatives Bill Aman, Ryan Barry, Kathy Hale and Gary LeBeau and many others. 

PHASE III Included election day preparation. Our office made about five thousand reminder phone calls to mobilize the vote on the last week before election day. We had set up about 22 cars with volunteers across the entire state to help people with special needs to able to go out and vote on the election day. Moreover three interns remained on the phone the entire day on the hotline to help with concerns of the voters, identify needs and remind people to go out on vote on the election day.

Our office developed a network of people helping provide a database of languages and translation services to reach out to these ethnic communities and up to 20 languages can be spoken within the network. The car services and automated focused ethnic based phone calls were made for our supported candidates.

After the elections, we are now working on the following four projects: We will with your help continue to maintain and build our office and its capacity:
At this time we will be working on the following 4 projects:
A)    An advocacy course for the community with ongoing education
B)     Fighting immigrophobia group: Course and faculty development
C)    Developing a National Strategy Group for 2008
D)    Children education program.

 As we get better organized a lot can be achieved if we work together in a coordinated way:
These efforts are one step to help the legislators understand the need and importance to work with our communities, and their concern with respect to civil rights, immigrant rights and other issues that pertain to there day to day lives in Connecticut and beyond. We hope that we have been able to educate our legislators that we the people VOTE:

 If anyone wants to replicate this effort or want to have a local presentation regarding these please feel free to contact us at CT@pakpac.net and our office CT local office telephone number is 860 730 2532 OR our Washington DC number 202 558 6404

Pictures:

Office set up initial:

Helpers / Supporters/ Interns

Office set up completed

Meeting with Congressman Larson

Meeting with Candidate Chris Murphy:
Now Congressman Elect

Meeting with Candidate Dianne Farrell

Meeting with Congressman Simmons

Meeting with candidate Joe Courtney:
Now Congressman Elect Joe Courtney

Meeting with Senatorial Candidate Ned Lamont

Meeting with Local Representatives & Candidates:
Bill Aman, Ryan Barry, Kathy Hale and State Senator Gary Lebeau

We the people of Connecticut vote:

We owe all the thanks to our community, our team leaders, workers and interns. No one individual or a small group can achieve something that we have been able to achieve. This is a small step but only because of dedicated selfless team of workers that we have been blessed with in CT.