Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
Print Edition

Jewish voter push

WASHINGTON — Partisan Jewish organizations are doing what they do every cycle: focusing on getting the vote out, especially in swing states where the margin between the winner and loser is likely to be narrow and Jewish voters could potentially influence the result.

Democrats are laboring in more states than Republicans.

The Kentucky Center for African American Heritage in Louisville, Ky. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition director, said his organization had reached over 410,000 “likely Trump and persuadable” voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, all swing states where Jewish voters could make a difference.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America has made 100,000 calls and sent 120,000 texts to Jewish voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The hope, said spokeswoman Sarah Garfinkel, is to reach 500,000 voters by election day.

Bend the Arc,which has endorsed Joe Biden and other Democrats, has exceeded its target of reaching 250,000 Jewish voters and is now extending its phone and text campaign to non-Jews in swing states, reaching 725,000 so far, said CEO Stosh Cotler.

The targeted states include Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Another target for Bend the Arc are left-wing Jews disillusioned by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ loss in the primaries to Biden.

“There are a set of Jewish voters who are way more progressive than the Biden-Harris ticket is, and we were concerned that those voters would potentially sit this race out,” she said.

Here are other steps underway

If you’re in Arizona or Florida and a 585 area code pops up on your phone, you might want to answer: It could be a Jewish volunteer in Rochester, NY whose mission it is to help you vote.

The Greater Rochester Jewish Federation is one of a number of local and national Jewish organizations endeavoring to make sure eligible voters — Jewish and not — get to the polls.

The organizations are for the most part tax-exempt and nonpartisan, but the virtual thumbtacks on their maps identify critical Democratic priorities: battlegrounds to increase minority turnout.

“The goal is really to register disenfranchised voters, specifically minority communities where access to proper information on voting access, to voter education, all the stuff that you need to be informed, and really to vote in general is really at an all-time low,” said Sarah Walters, the Rochester federation’s community relations director.

Volunteers are trained to explain how to safely mail in votes.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella body for public policy groups, has helped Jewish Community Relations Councils in eight states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — partner with “All Voting is Local,” a voter registration project run by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Registering deregistered voters

Democrats say that Republican-led states have in recent years removed from the rolls voters who have not voted for several successive elections.

National and local Jewish organizations are partnering with voting rights groups to tell voters in states who may have been stricken off the rolls how to get back on.

The Rochester federation partnered with Reclaim the Vote, a project of Center for Common Ground, a voting rights group. (The Reform movement also has partnered with Reclaim the Vote.)

Walters said that 150 Jewish volunteers in her city have trained so far to reach deregistered voters in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

“You’ve got a script right in front of you that is county-specific and person-specific with all the information they need to figure out if they’re registered,” Walters said.

“If they believe that they are registered, you’re making sure that they know how to check that and if they aren’t registered, you’re making sure they have the resources they need to find out that they’re eligible to register.”

Increasing turnout

The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism wants an “overwhelming” turnout, said its director, Rabbi Jonah Pesner.

The pandemic means door-knocking is not the option it was in past elections, so Reform volunteers have used electronic means to reach voters, through texting and apps.

“We had originally set as our goal 250,000 voter engagements,” Pesner said. “We’ve engaged 350,000 and we’re on track to get to half a million by Election Day.”

The outreach is strategic, Pesner said, citing as an example in Chicago, which is solidly Democratic, so the local Reform Jewish activists consulted with longtime allies in black churches. They joined efforts to reach voters in neighboring Wisconsin, which is a swing state.

“Knowing that there would be attacks on enfranchisement in the inner city of Milwaukee in particular, this kind of interesting intersectional effort was born between the relationships that pre-existed in Chicago,” he said.

Bringing out the lawyers

Pesner is also recruiting lawyers to join a project run by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to be on call until Election Day to report attempts at voter suppression.

“The hotline has already become almost overwhelmed with calls,” said Pesner. “And obviously the Reform community is uniquely positioned to deliver lawyers.”

Sheila Katz, who directs the National Council of Jewish Women, is also recruiting lawyers and others to watch polls.

“We’re working to get people to polling locations that have a particular level of expertise and training to be able to advise people on their rights,” she said.

“Lawyers are definitely highly preferred as people we want on the ground. But we have training that will be available to any person who wants to make sure that they’re available to be able to let people know what their rights are.”

Lawyers for the ADL have joined an effort led by Common Cause in Texas to overturn an order by Gov. Greg Abbott to limit ballot drops to one station per county.

“Limiting the number of drop-off sites available to absentee voters reduces the options Texans have to participate in the 2020 election without risking their health,” Cheryl Drazin, the vice president of ADL’s central division, said in a statement.

Encouraging election day volunteering

The Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah is encouraging Jewish organizations to let staffers take election day off to volunteer as poll workers, and providing training for deescalation should they encounter attempts to disrupt voting. It launched its program, called Free and Fair: Our Duty to Democracy, on Oct. 13.

Aaron Dorfman, the foundation’s president, said it was working with Over Zero. The training involves connecting volunteers from faith communities and establishing lines of communication if there is a threat.

The ADL has published a guide for state and local officials to identify possible sources of extremist violence ahead of time.

Sending wish-you-were-voting postcards

The Jewish federation in Buffalo, NY is getting volunteers to write postcards to the voters in the states designated by the Reclaim Our Vote project, which cites studies that have found that handwritten appeals on the back of colorful postcards spur 25% of recipients to reregister.

“Every county has specific texts that you’re allowed to use and they handwrite postcards, and they’re given an address to send,” said Mara Koven-Gelman, the federation’s community relations director.

Deborah Cohen, a retired psychiatric nurse who is a congregant at Buffalo’s Congregation Shir Shalom, initiated the postcard writing, drawing in 50 of her fellow congregants.

Koven-Gelman said the effort has spread throughout the community and has reached “students and grandparents, people trying to make a difference.”

Addressing challenges facing the young and old

Hillel, the international organization that works with college students and young adults, has revamped its MitzVote campaign for the pandemic era, launching a website that helps students homebound by the pandemic figure out how and where to register to vote.

Two years ago, “West Wing” star Josh Malina starred in a MitzVote get-out-the-vote video. This year, he’s joined by several other youth-oriented Jews in promoting MitzVote’s “Schmear Campaign,” which aims to convince college-aged voters that casting a ballot during the pandemic is as easy as toasting a bagel.

Hillel is not alone in targeting college students, who may face unique challenges in being able to vote because many are not living where they expected. Pesner said students in the Reform movement are amping up the student-to-student texting network they established after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., in 2018.

“We’ve got this massive text to text campaign of students holding their peers accountable,” he said.

At the same time, Jewish groups are giving special attention to elderly voters, as well, who may also face unique obstacles in casting their ballots.




Leave a Reply