Agnes and Myrtle say "Yes you can..."

by Lucas O'Connor [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Full disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign

So far in 2008, Democrats have held two presidential primaries without the possibility of delegates not being seated at the national convention- New Hampshire and South Carolina.  And a funny thing happened.  Turnout for the New Hampshire primary was 83.5% of the total number of Democratic votes cast in the general there in 2004.  In South Carolina, turnout hit 80% of the total number of 2004 Democratic votes.  Part of that is that Democrats are coming out of the woodwork.  But part of it is independents swinging Democratic.

But if you're a DTS voter in California, it isn't necessarily an intuitive process to get your mitts on a Democratic ballot.  Poll workers won't offer it to you, and that seems to make a difference since in 2004 only 8% of the 2.5 million DTS voters in the state participated in the primary.  Since then we've amped up to about 3 million DTSers and getting them into the Democratic process is a huge deal.

To that end, Courage campaign recruited the good folks at Handsome Donkey to help the medicine go down.  Check out the video:

Any question that could possibly need answering on the subject can be found on the specially designed Courage Campaign page created just for this occasion.

As far as I am aware, nobody else (California Democratic Party included) is making much of a push on this.  But as many people know by now, creating a habit of voting for Democrats- in primaries or generals- helps breed Democrats.  And that's a pretty good thing.

Courage has already embarked on an email and robocall campaign to contact 300,000 DTS voters throughout the state, and will be up on the radio in many large markets starting on Monday.

If you're moved by the progressive spirit, you can always drop a few bucks in the Courage Campaign kitty to help with this and future projects.