In his excellent new piece on Barack Obama's voter registration efforts, Nation D.C. editor Chris Hayes cites our feature article on how increased turnout among African-Americans, Latinos, and young people could shift the electoral map this year:

The website Progress Illinois commissioned statistician Nate Silver to use his sophisticated electoral prediction model to estimate by just how much Obama would have to increase turnout among African-Americans in order to be competitive in some of the red states he has targeted. Silver concluded that, nationwide, each increase of 10 percent in African-American turnout from the 2004 baseline would result in about thirteen electoral votes. In Georgia, he predicted it would take a 50 percent increase in African-American turnout to put Obama at even odds to win.

Fifty percent is a massive increase: when you control for socioeconomics, African-Americans in the South vote at slightly higher levels than whites, and historically, increases in black turnout in the region have tended to provoke equal and opposite increases in white turnout for the opposing candidate. But then again, this is all uncharted territory. We've never had a black man one election away from the presidency. And there's never been a registration effort like Vote for Change, the name the Obama campaign has given to its fifty-state registration push.

Hayes also notes comments by Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand -- which we filmed -- at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin, TX last month:

At a panel at Netroots Nation in July, Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand described the philosophy behind the undertaking. "The way to change the political process," he said, "is to change the face of the electorate. Because it's not about getting Barack Obama elected, it's about whether we're gonna have a progressive majority."

Hayes goes on to provide some local context, writing that "[v]oter-registration drives have a particular resonance for black Chicago."  Read the whole thing here.