First Mass Voter Registration in the Nation a Huge Success

More than 100 volunteers gathered at the Hudson Area Library Community Room to door to door canvass in Hudson.

The very first Mass Voter Registration in the nation in a swing district was a resounding success. Organized district-wide in NY-19 by Resistance Voter Registration, and in Hudson locally by members of Hudson Resistance, Indivisible Chatham NY and Indivisible CD 19, the event had 10 sites across the Congressional District with over 350 volunteers doing door to door canvassing to register new voters.

The district is represented by Congressman John Faso who has refused to hold Town Hall meetings in the district opting for completely controlled "Tele-Town Hall" conference calls instead where staffers are able to screen the questions put to the Congress Member. Canvassers also collected hundreds of signatures on a petition calling on the Congressman to hold Town Hall meetings in the district.

Faso has held small group meetings with groups of 8-12 people. But those meetings are off the record and he refuses to allow people to record the meetings. Town Hall meetings are on the record events where the Congressman could lay out his positions publicly. 

The Hudson site broke the record for the most participants in the entire district, with over 100 volunteers showing up on a very cold March morning. The cold weather didn't dampen the mood of the canvassers. Some teams went out, covered their entire territory and went back out two or even three times.

Resistance Voter Registration is not affiliated with a particular political party but is branded as anti-Trump. It is a collaborative effort which includes labor unions, citizen action groups, Resistance and Indivisible chapters, the Working Families Party and Democratic Committees from throughout the NY-19 Congressional District.

The event received some pre-event press and post-event coverage in the Register-Star.

There are also some photo albums from the district-wide event on Facebook here and here and check out all the posts on Twitter and Instagram with the #NY19Votes hashtag.