But almost 40% of eligible women are not even registered to vote. And among young women ages 18-24, the most progressive voters in the country, only 21% voted in the 1994 elections, compared to 61% of people aged 65-74.
The 1994 campaigns did little to mobilize women's votes and in fact, candidates often took positions on issues that alienated women voters. As a result, women made up only 51% of voters in 1994, compared to 54% of the voters in 1992, the "Year of the Woman." A conservative, right-wing Congress was elected with an only 2% margin of the vote.
Expo '96 for Women's Empowerment featured training sessions and speakers on registering and mobilizing women voters, as well as a voter registration "super booth" in the exhibit hall. Speakers presented strategies to increase voter registration, especially among poor women and young women.
According to Frances Fox Piven of Human SERVE, "Our voter registration practices were invented towards the end of the 19th century by Republican businessmen in the North who wanted to disenfranchise immigrants, and by Bourbon planters in the South who wanted to disenfranchise black people." Her organization worked for 12 years to pass the recent National Voter Registration Act - the "Motor Voter" law - that requires states to offer voter registration at all public agencies including driver's license offices, and welfare and medicaid offices. The NVRA also created a nationwide mail-in voter registration form. During its first year, over 11 million new voters have been registered as a result of the NVRA.
Margaret Conway of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, described a new program at Planned Parenthood - named "Maggie's Millions" after Margaret Sanger - to offer voter registration at all Planned Parenthood clinics to both their 20,000 staff members and five million clients.
Women of color are a focus of some campaigns. C. Delores Tucker, Chair of the National Political Congress of Black Women, described the "Black Women's Voter Registration Crusade," a coalition of 40 major national African-American women's organizations to educate, register, and mobilize voters. Lydia Camarillo's group, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, plans to register one million new Latina and Latino voters. They will visit high schools in the southwest to register eligible 18-year-olds.
Student voters are another area of untapped feminist voting potential. Kimmi Lee with the University of California Student Association says her organization has convinced two University of California campuses to include voter registration materials with the class registration materials that are sent to each student. They collected 20,000 voter registration cards throughout the state in 1994.
The Feminist Majority and Third Wave will conduct separate massive voter education and registration drives this summer targeting college students. The Feminist Majority campaign, "Freedom Summer '96," aims to register young people in California, a state faced with an anti-affirmative action and anti-civil rights initiative this fall.
Speakers also stressed the importance of voter education and get out the vote drives aimed at women.
Rosemary Dempsey, NOW Vice President-Action, reported that NOW successfully mobilized women's groups and students and Maine to defeat an anti-lesbian & gay initiative. The Women's Vote Project, a coalition of national women's organizations, has been developed to mobilize women voters. Irene Natividad, chair of the Women's Vote Project, described their "media message campaign to make the connection between politics and our daily lives." The campaign will feature print, radio, and TV advertising. Anne Bryant of the American Association of University Women talked about their Women's Network for Change, a fax and e-mail alert network that reviews what Congress has done lately on issues like education, reproductive choice, welfare, and Medicaid/Medicare. Marie Wilson with the Ms. Foundation will use the April 25 Take Our Daughters to Work Day, with the 1996 theme of "Vote for Me!" as a way to organize adults to "vote for the issues important to girls."
