The organization launched a six-week voter registration drive on July 27, according to CAUSE Community Organizing Director Hazel Davalos. The drive will be CAUSE's biggest voter registration effort to date"in 2014, for example, the organization registered 250 voters in Santa Maria.
"This year we're really working to have a larger impact," Davalos told the Sun. "We'll be out to places like grocery stores, post offices, we'll even be going door-to-door in the neighborhoods. You name it."
Santa Maria is the most populous city in both its Assembly and congressional districts, but it also has one of the lowest voter registration and turnout rates, Davalos said. According to a CAUSE press release, only 59 percent of all eligible voters in Santa Maria are registered, compared to 78 percent in Santa Barbara and 75 percent in Oxnard.
Davalos said Santa Maria's low registration rates can be traced back to its large populations of young adults, Latinos, and residents of low-income neighborhoods"all groups with particularly low voter registration rates. CAUSE will especially target these groups in its campaign.
"Across the board, communities that are disenfranchised"whether it's Latinos or young people or the poor"often register at lower rates, and we're hoping to address that issue at a local level," Davalos said.
Because Santa Maria's registration rates are so poor, its district representatives tend to come from Santa Barbara or San Luis Obispo areas. Upping voter registration and turnout rates might give Santa Maria's residents better representation in state and federal politics, Davalos said.
"When candidates and elected officials see Santa Maria has such a low voter registration rate, they spend less time talking to and listening to voters here," she said. "We'd like to change that."
