Pennsylvania VOICE Announces Results of Its 2008 Election Work

Pennsylvania VOICE, a statewide collaborative involving more than 60 organizations dedicated to nonpartisan voter registration and protection efforts, has just released a preliminary report detailing its work on the 2008 Elections in Pennsylvania — and is already gearing up for the next series of elections. 

According to Pat Clark of Jackson/Clark Partners, statewide consultant for Pennsylvania VOICE, the collaborative is looking for additional nonpartisan partner organizations to help in its ongoing efforts, and will be convening statewide meetings of its partner organizations in the coming months. Volunteers interested in helping with Pennsylvania VOICE’s voter registration and protection efforts are also being encouraged to contact the organization as it looks ahead to the 2010 and 2012 elections. 

Highlights of the 2008 election report include: 

• Registering 294,225 voters across the state during the 2008 calendar year (for the primary and general elections), or more than 41 percent of the approximately 711,000 voters registered statewide,
• Awarding 12 Pennsylvania nonprofit organizations a total of more than $40,000 in re-grants to support their work in helping to engage under-participating constituencies in the voting process, and
• Monitoring nearly 4500 calls on election protection hotlines during Election Day (November 4, 2008), including nearly 1400 reports of voter problems and issues, which were then investigated by collaborative personnel deployed statewide. 

The report, downloadable here, details the work that the collaborative did in reaching out to “non-voting or underperforming constituencies who rarely if ever are reached by partisan campaigns,” according to Clark. 

Clark notes that the organizations who have come together as part of Pennsylvania VOICE are “primarily community service organizations that will succeed in the peer-to-peer contact this effort requires. Those people who often get left out of the process trust these organizations.” 
Groups awarded the re-grants (with areas of state served) included: 

More information on Pennsylvania VOICE, as well as contact info for prospective volunteers and partner organizations, is available at: http://statevoices.org/states/pennsylvania