City & State New York
September 11, 2017
I
N A COLD basement community room with beige walls and a loud, droning air conditioning unit, a woman stood idly by the door. “What are you doing down here?” she asked. “We’re registering people to vote!” said Allen Lloyd, a member of the NYC Votes Street Team. He had been invited by Win, a nonprofit that runs shelters and support services for women and families across the city. It was August 2017, the week before the deadline to register for the 2017 primary election, and Win was running a voter registration drive across all of its shelters, including this one, in East Flatbush. Lloyd was set up behind a table covered in registration forms and candy as well as red, white and blue rubber bracelets. It was the second day of the drive at this shelter, and business was slow. After two hours, just two residents had registered to vote for the first time. Another resident updated her address. A few others came down to the community room, only to decline the offer to register or fill out a survey about their voting habits. Vernetta Neal had updated her address the day before, and her 18-year-old son registered for the first time. She had been living in Brooklyn for a decade, and had been homeless for almost a year. She took two buses to get to her old polling location in East New York to vote in last year’s presidential election, but by updating her address, she could avoid the long commute for this year’s election. Neal said voting is important to her. “It’s important for everyone to give their opinions and their views and make it easier for us all to get along.” She added, “A lot of people in homeless shelters give up because they feel like (they) have no hope. So the fact that (NYC Votes) comes to us instead of us having us look for (it) is great.” These voter drives are especially important in homeless shelters “because there’s so little awareness of what the voting rights are in New York state,” said Matt Sollars, a spokesman for the New York City Campaign Finance Board. “So many people that we talk to, they’re not aware that they can vote at a homeless shelter. They think you have to be at a residence,” he said. “But you can register anywhere you’re domiciled. You can even put your residence down as the ‘park bench on the corner.’”
CHARMEL LUCAS VOTES ON ELECTION DAY LAST NOVEMBER.
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