NAACP kicks off registration drive with eyes on November

As the NAACP kicked off its national voter registration drive in Atlanta on Wednesday, Georgia activists said they will target the estimated 1 million unregistered minorities here.

But after historic turnout among black voters nationally in 2008, there are doubts whether the same level of enthusiasm exists four years after Barack Obama was elected the nation's first black president. Meanwhile, Republicans -- in Georgia, especially -- are increasingly looking forward to voting in November, either in favor of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, or against Obama.

The challenge, NAACP leaders said, is to fight complacency.

"Our biggest concern this year is the enthusiasm going on," NAACP Georgia State Conference President Edward DuBose said after a news conference at Clark Atlanta University. "The energy compared to this time in the last election is down."

The NAACP is non-partisan and its leaders were careful Wednesday not to present the registration drive as an effort to boost Democrats; rather, it's a matter of individual empowerment, they said.

Still,  black voters have historically and overwhelmingly supported Democrats. Black voters went to the polls in higher numbers in 2008 than in any presidential election since at least 1996, the first year the U.S. Census Bureau tracked turnout by race. In Georgia, black voters turned out in historic numbers after a registration effort that swelled the number of minority voters by 25 percent.

But that was then. Since November 2008, black voter registration has stagnated. That's a problem for Democrats because, despite 2008's unprecedented turnout, Obama still lost Georgia by 5 percentage points to Republican John McCain.

Justin Tomczak, a GOP activist and 11th District chairman for Romney's Georgia campaign, said the state GOP has seen record turnout at county and district conventions. He scoffed at the idea that voter registration alone would propel Democrats to victory here.

Those efforts in the past, he said, have "produced less than impressive results on election day as the vast majority of these late registrants do not actually vote," he said.

NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said the national drive is beginning months earlier than usual, in part to combat the perceived enthusiasm gap.

“We’re empowering our members to work smarter and asking our volunteers to work harder than they ever have before,” he said. “We’re facing massive obstacles in many states in both getting people registered and turning them out to vote.”

He said several states have implemented policies that make it harder for people to vote.

“I have run voter registration drives in many states, but I’ve never had to run one while pushing a Xerox machine down the street. That’s what the law in Georgia effectively requires. That’s what the law in Arizona effectively requires. IDs have to be attached to the forms…The hurdles are higher than they’ve ever been in the last 40 years or more.”

Typically, voter interest tends to drop off between presidential and mid-term elections. For Democrats, it was especially so this time, because there were no nominating elections to rev up interest .

It is no coincidence that the NAACP is kicking off its national voter registration drive in Atlanta, which is one of the cradles of the Civil Rights Movement, is home of the largest concentration of historically black colleges and universities and is located strategically between North Carolina, Virginia and Florida – three states Obama is specifically targeting.

Georgia, “is a state that’s changing. Atlanta continues to grow and more Latinos have moved into the area as well," George Mason University's Michael P. McDonald said. "The state is trending toward being a more competitive state, although it’s not there yet."

That could change in future elections, McDonald said, and it makes sense for Democrats to continue to lay the groundwork.