Late last week, the Obama campaign announced a plan to launch a massive voter registration drive, dubbed "Vote for Change." The campaign plans to mobilize its army of grassroots supporters to register thousands of new voters for the general election. The plan is an ambitious one: not only does the campaign hope to bring voter participation in the general up above 50 percent, it also targets all 50 states, even places where Obama is thought to have zero chance of winning.
Since the announcement, Vote for Change has been widely reported on as an example of the campaign looking beyond the primary to an eventual general election battle against John McCain. But according to deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand, the massive registration effort is also a way for the Obama campaign to have a far-reaching impact on down-ticket Democratic races across the country:
Hildebrand cited Wyoming as an example. The March 8 caucus state got little attention from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and it's a long shot as a Democratic pickup in the presidential election. But Obama, who beat Clinton in Wyoming easily, built a volunteer team there that can now be dispatched to aid Gary Trauner, who lost a 2006 race for the state's at-large House seat by 1,000 votes. Trauner has a better shot this year: The GOP incumbent who beat him, Rep. Barbara Cubin, is retiring. "We're looking for opportunities beyond the presidential campaign," Hildebrand said.
While Vote for Change doesn't officially kick off until after next week's elections in Indiana and North Carolina, the primary itself continues to motivate record numbers of people to sign up. The Washington Post reports that one million new Democratic voters have registered in the last seven primaries, and people registering to vote have flooded the election boards in the run up to the May 6th elections. In North Carolina, 165,000 new voters registered before deadline and 150,000 have signed up in Indiana.
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