Former gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Gillum launches massive voter registration effort

Flori­da Demo­c­ra­t­ic ris­ing star Andrew Gillum has announced a mas­sive push to reg­is­ter over a mil­lion vot­ers in the nation’s third most pop­u­lous state. 

Gillum gained nation­al fame last year, when he nar­row­ly lost the guber­na­to­r­i­al race by the slimmest mar­gin in Flori­da exec­u­tive elec­toral his­to­ry (he and Repub­li­can win­ner Ron DeSan­tis were with­in 0.5% of each other). 

Now, as 2020 approach­es, Gillum has pledged to “deliv­er Flori­da for who­ev­er the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee is” and is mobi­liz­ing tens of thou­sands of vol­un­teers and mil­lions of dol­lars to do so. He is adding his efforts to an already exist­ing push by the state Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to reg­is­ter new vot­ers.  

Flori­da is arguably the biggest and most impor­tant swing state, with a huge elec­torate that is almost even­ly split between Democ­rats and Republicans. 

Gillum’s loss is only the lat­est exam­ple of close elec­tions in the state; In 2016 Don­ald Trump beat Hillary Clin­ton by less than 120,000 votes out of more than nine mil­lion votes cast, while in 2000 George Bush only beat Al Gore because the US Supreme Court for­bade a recount of the state’s extreme­ly close vote. 

These num­bers do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the real polit­i­cal opin­ions of the large state’s pop­u­la­tion, though. 

Until 2018 – when vot­ers approved a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment – over 1.5 mil­lion for­mer felons were barred for life from vot­ing (an egre­gious pol­i­cy that oth­er democ­ra­cies con­sid­er it a gross human rights vio­la­tion).

The Repub­li­can-con­trolled state leg­is­la­ture is now try­ing every trick in the book to lim­it those new­ly-enfran­chised vot­ers’ rights. 

Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­er reg­is­tra­tion has dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly in Flori­da since Barack Obama’s elec­tions in 2008 and 2012, thanks in large part to state Repub­li­cans’ numer­ous efforts to dis­en­fran­chise their polit­i­cal ene­mies’ sup­port­ers – pri­mar­i­ly non-white, poor and urban peo­ple.  

Gillum’s efforts are part of a broad­er move­ment by Democ­rats across the coun­try to com­bat the effects of vot­er sup­pres­sion in the lead up to 2020. He is joined by for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric Hold­er, who last week passed up the chance to run for pres­i­dent in order to focus on com­bat­ing ger­ry­man­der­ing (the process by which politi­cians change dis­trict bound­aries to give them­selves unfair advantages). 

Also among the cham­pi­ons fight­ing to make the 2020 vote fair­er is Geor­gia Demo­c­ra­t­ic ris­ing star Stacey Abrams, who is still con­test­ing her 2018 loss to Bri­an Kemp in a law­suit against the state. Not only were there signs of ram­pant vot­er sup­pres­sion in the state, the elec­tion itself was run by the then-Sec­re­tary of State of Geor­gia… who was Bri­an Kemp. Abrams found­ed the bipar­ti­san group Fair Fight  which focus­es on vot­er suppression.

Abrams, who will vis­it Seat­tle next month, is one of the most pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians in the coun­try and has been wide­ly dis­cussed as a poten­tial vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders. She has used her polit­i­cal influ­ence for the cause of Fair Fight, lay­ing down a ground rule for any polit­i­cal suit­or; they have to be seri­ous about deal­ing with vot­er suppression. 

Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates would be wise to take her advice on this issue. 

Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates run­ning for the White House in 2020 can expect to be remind­ed that their most depend­able sup­port­ers are peo­ple that Repub­li­cans have spent years try­ing to dis­en­fran­chise. Many Democ­rats believe that one of their par­ty’s most impor­tant tasks is giv­ing these peo­ple back their polit­i­cal voice. Andrew Gillum is cer­tain­ly one of them.