Anna Eskamani organizing 11 voter registration events

Image via Colin Hackley.

Democratic Rep. Anna V. Eskamani’s People Power for Florida committee announced Friday it is organizing 11 voter registration events next week, including efforts on five university campuses.

In February, Eskamani, the Orlando Representative who was a leading progressive organizer before being elected to the House in 2018, announced that her political committee, People Power for Florida, would be converted from an organization supporting her elections to a voter registration group.

The events will take place throughout the week, focusing on National Voter Registration Day on Tuesday.

“Over 4 million eligible Floridians aren’t registered to vote; anything is possible in 2022 and 2024 if we redefine the electorate,” Eskamani said in a news release.

In the release, People Power said the effort is focused on registering new young voters and reactivating inactive Democrats. It will include events on the campuses of Florida State University, Florida A&M University, University of Florida, University of Central Florida, and the University of South Florida. There also will be a virtual phone bank on Sept. 28, where volunteers across Florida will call inactive voters in their counties.

People Power Organizing Director Gabby Alcantara-Anderson, said, “With the risk of COVID-19 in mind, some of our National Voter Registration Day celebrations will be virtual and focused on telling Floridians how easy it is to register to vote online.

Since February, People Power raised more than $173,000, spending more than $84,000, some of that on paid staff who Eskamani brought on in the spring. In June, Eskamani committed People Power to register 25,000 new voters before the 2022 election.

Eskamani noted that recent news reports, notably by POLITICO, showed Republicans closing the voter registration gap on Democrats. She called the trend a “symptom of a problem that is many years in the making.”

“Democrats cannot start organizing in communities in the months leading up to an election — we need continuous year-round organizing focused on registering and mobilizing voters,” she said.