Progress Illinois

The Service Employees International Union is sinking some serious resources into comprehensive get-out-the-vote efforts in Northwest Indiana, where over 5,000 of the union's members reside.

The SEIU Illinois State Council (which sponsors this website) is targeting the 325 highest Democratic performing precincts in Lake County, most of which are located in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago.  Over the last two months, they've registered nearly 10,000 new voters in these areas.

Now that the voter registration period has ended, SEIU is shifting focus to a list of 130,000 voters targeted for contact in the region. The union will have approximately 100 full time staff and members working on this effort by the end of this week.  They are knocking on approximately 6,000 doors a day and, with 40 phone lines dedicated to the effort, estimate they'll complete about 2,000 daily calls.

Today, SEIU also went up on four African-American radio stations with a $120,000 ad buy to publicize early voting and promote their "Ride to the Polls" program, which consists of regular bus routes in Gary and individually scheduled rides to voting centers in Hammond and East Chicago. Listen to the ad:

Internal mp3

They plan to further promote this program through full page print ads running daily in the Hammond Times and Gary Post-Tribune.  Two hundred SEIU members will supplement these daily efforts every weekend.  Via a toll-free number (877-857-9638), voters with questions about the program will be able to reach a professional call center that will provide bus timetables and schedule individual rides.

"We're trying to move as many people as possible to early vote," SEIU Illinois political director Genie Kastrup said.

In that vein, SEIU spearheaded the legal effort to allow early voting in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago, after local Republicans attempted to keep the voting centers in these highly-populated, Democratic-leaning towns shut down.  Over the past two weeks, legal challenges have ping-ponged between five different courts.  After a circuit court judge approved an injunction ordering the polling places opened last Tuesday, early voting commenced in the three cities. But even as ballots are cast in these areas, the GOP continues to object. 

Today, on a conference call with the legal parties involved, Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias Schneider reportedly said she would keep the early voting centers open at least until a hearing she scheduled for Monday.  Kastrup said that if the three polling places get shut down next week -- an unlikely scenario at this point -- SEIU is prepared to start transporting residents of northern Lake County to the early voting center in Crown Point.

Meanwhile, on Election Day, SEIU plans to have 600 paid canvassers conduct a final door-to-door and phone blitz of the targeted 325 precincts.  They will have the same number of workers for Election Day to ensure that anyone who needs a ride to the poll gets one. 

"I think there's a real scenario where, if you're a working person and you're faced with going to vote on Election Day, you could be standing in line for hours," Kastrup said.  "You know, each of these polling sites have one voting machine and one machine on stand-by."

To alleviate this problem, SEIU has said they are willing to purchase additional voting machines for the underserved precincts of Lake County.