Bloomberg Group Seeks To Register 100,000 Young Voters :: 04/09/2020

Michael Bloomberg may be out of the presidential race, thankfully, but he’s still got his fingers in the pie. It’s not surprising since gun control was shaping up early to be a key issue in the race, one Democrats expected to win on.

Since COVID-19, that might have changed. However, Bloomberg and his groups are continuing their push.

Their latest effort? To try and register 100,000 new young voters online.

A gun-safety group aligned with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending $1.5 million on a new virtual organizing program that aims to register 100,000 young voters.

The push from Students Demand Action, shared first with CNN, replaces the group’s planned in-person voter-registration efforts, which were derailed by the coronavirus outbreak and the widespread shutdowns it has triggered around the nation. The new program focuses on 13 battleground states and marks the group’s first large-scale effort to use online-only tools to encourage young people to head to the polls.

…

Students Demand Action, which has about 400 chapters and about 200,000 members, was gearing up for a big voter-registration effort on campuses in the spring, said Sarah Green, who oversees student organizing.

“Then schools started closing,” she said.

As part of the new push, the group is adding 17 “virtual” organizers to rally young gun-control activists to conduct “relational canvassing,” cajoling their friends, relatives and acquaintances — all stuck at home themselves — to register to vote. Rather than setting up tables on the campus quad or approaching college students outside the library, the persuasion push now will happen via text message or during video conferencing hangouts.

(Students Demand Action doesn’t actually process any voter-registration forms. Instead, through a partnership with the nonprofit Rock the Vote, students are encouraged to text “FUTURE” to 644-33 to find links on how to register to vote in their states virtually.)

Awfully bold of them to assume that they’ll find 100,000 anti-gun young people.

Look, up until now, young people have tended to side with gun control. They’ve been indoctrinated to believe they’re fortunate to reach adulthood without getting shot, so of course, they’re jumpy on the issue of guns.

But that was before COVID-19.

Now, the question really is how many of those young people wanted to be among the millions of first-time gun buyers but couldn’t because of the gun control laws on the books? While long guns are options for anyone over 18 in many places, many others have made it illegal to buy a gun until you’re 21.

Just how many of those potential anti-gun voters are now sitting at home praying everything goes well because they have no recourse if it doesn’t? How many would be gun owners right now if they could?

My guess is that a lot of them.

What if those are the 100,000 people Students Demand Action end up helping get registered?

Oh, the hilarity.

I get that Bloomberg is going to push his gun-grabbing agenda no matter what. The man is a blatant authoritarian with no respect for anyone’s rights even without a pandemic to use as an excuse. Look at what he did as mayor of New York. He tried to regulate what people ate and drank, for crying out loud.

So yeah, expect to see his groups continue to push for this kind of thing. It’s also up to all those younger Americans stymied by unconstitutional regulations to step up and make sure their voices are heard as well. I suspect there are far more of them than a mere 100,000.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/

https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/04/09/bloomberg-group-register-voters/