local voter turnout, and howard dean
I heard the funniest commercial on the way to school today: Howard Dean plugging Yahoo! Local. In it, Dean
reclaims the scream that was his downfall. Personally, I loved the scream. I thought it was great and energizing and all that. Then again, I was already a firm Dean supporter so all the negative publicity around it (which I still don't understand) wasn't going to affect me. Anyway, the
MP3 is hilarious. In IOWA! In OHIO! Heh. It's funny.
In today's paper (and this is unrelated to Dean, although I would make the argument that if it weren't for his re-energizing the young folk and getting people interested in the democratic process again, we'd be in for four more years of hell) it was
reported that voter registrations in Santa Clara and San Mateo county reached an all-time high. This will not change the outcome of the presidential race in California, but it does
get people involved which is a very, very important thing. "The [Santa Clara County registrar's] office has signed up an average of 2,730 new voters a day since Oct. 1." Jeez, that's a ton of people. One youngster was quoted as saying that his mother made him sign up (good for her!), so he could vote a particular way on a local issue—and we have plenty around here. So, even if the 850K+ voters in Santa Clara County aren't going to affect the presidential race, they will be very important for local and state votes, and that's just as important—especially if it's local issues that make a voter aware of their power, for the first time.
