Voter Registration Fuels Gender Gap Expo '96 speakers discuss strategies to register young women, poor women W omen's votes are crucial to electing politicians who care about social and feminist issues. The 1994 campaigns did little to mobilize women's votes and in fact, candidates often took positions on issues that alienated women voters. Speakers presented strategies to increase voter registration, especially among poor women and young women. The NVRA also created a nationwide mail-in voter registration form.
Women of color are a focus of some campaigns.
Lydia Camarillo's group, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, plans to register one million new Latina and Latino voters. Student voters are another area of untapped feminist voting potential. Kimmi Lee with the University of California Student Association says her organization has convinced two University of California campuses to include voter registration materials with the class registration materials that are sent to each student. They collected 20,000 voter registration cards throughout the state in 1994. The Feminist Majority and Third Wave will conduct separate massive voter education and registration drives this summer targeting college students.