Registering Voters for Equality

Registering Voters for Equality

Mark Patro sells roasted coffee at Pink House Coffee at the Fells Point Farmers Market on Saturday mornings.  He decided that while there, he would collect pledges for the Marylanders for Marriage Equality (MD4ME) campaign.    As he was collecting signatures, several people said they would sign if they were registered to vote.

Working independent of MD4ME, Patro, who is the president of the Baltimore County chapter of PFLAG, launched his own voter registration drive to boost marriage equality at the ballot box in November.  He underwent training to teach volunteers who would then be certified for either instructing others or to perform actual voter registration.

“I went to the Catonsville election headquarters for Baltimore County and got myself trained to register people to vote,” Patro told Baltimore OUTloud.  “Now I can offer to register unregistered pledge signers at the Farmers Market, and I also can train others to become Voter Registration Volunteers.”

After being trained and certified, a person is able to complete a voter registration application for another— instead of encouraging them to do it themselves and never really knowing if they followed through. It's an important part of the marriage equality campaign to ensure that people who support marriage equality are registered to vote before October 15.

Over 20 people turned out at the GLCCB on the evening of July 3 to receive the instruction from Patro. On the Facebook page, “Marriage Equality Information Exchange,” Mike Bernard, one of those trained, went one step further and posted, “I challenge all of us to train 10 of our friends and colleagues.”

College students, according to recent polls, are more likely to support marriage equality and represent a large number of unregistered voters, making such registration efforts critical in winning the referendum.  Several hundred thousand eligible voters in Maryland are not registered.

Published in Maryland LGBT News

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