Thursday, October 21, 2004

An 80-20 Member Registering Voters

The following account is by William Uy, a life member of 80-20 and a Republican Delegate to 80-20's Endorsement Convention, of his recent experience registering voters in Oakland, CA.

Dear 80-20 Supporters,

I thought that you would be interested in the results of our (my wife Jing and I) voter registration activity in Oakland Chinatown. Since we do not speak Cantonese, we were lucky that three senior high schoolers - who speak Cantonese - volunteered to help us.

In a total of 6.5 hours (in two days), we registered 128 voters (includes on-site registration and cards requested) – predominantly Chinese Americans. We were busy the moment we set up our registration table. 53 of those were registered on-site and 35 were FIRST TIME voters. Even though we have voter registration cards with Chinese instructions, there were some who
still needed help filling out the cards. We also helped those, who brought their actual ballots and do not know what to do, even though the ballots have both Chinese and English instructions.

I tell you! It was a truly very satisfying and patriotic work. This is specially so when you watched the excitement and determination of some frail, white hair senior housewives who were registering for the first time in their life – and they are for Kerry!

Party affiliation of those registered on site: 2 Republicans, 14 Democrats, 37 declined to state party affiliation. However, it is safe to assume that over 90% of the 128 voters are for Kerry – judging from their comments.

Attached are some pictures taken of our voter registration activity. Note that I have used 80-20 as the organizer of this activity.

We also conducted voter registration at our parish church, St. Ignatius, in Antioch. Only 3 came to register (all Democrats).

William Uy

Pictures from the Event