My former method of voter registration drives, of simply leaving a voter registration form rolled up by the door knob with a flier asking people to register to vote, is unlikely to produce results in the age of repressive voter ID requirements. These days a voter must attach a photostat of their ID to the registration form when mailing it in. Easy enough for anyone with a copy machine in their home, but how many retail clerks, food service workers, etc., have copiers in their homes? So it is necessary to take a different approach.

Under the motor-voter registration law that was passed under Bill Clinton (he never gets enough credit for this most important achievement) citizens should have the opportunity to register to vote whenever they go to their division of motor vehicles to get their license, register their car, or any other business. This is a great time because they will, of necessity, have their ID with them. The problem is that much of the time the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and State Board of Elections do not coordinate with one another, so this does not always happen. Even in states such as Virginia, which has a Democratic governor, there are problems. That the Democratic party does not keep an eye on this speaks very poorly of state party organizations. In addition to keeping an eye on the DMV to make sure that motor voter protocols are being followed, the Democratic party needs to promote the idea of registering to vote when you go to the DMV. Given that every state party now has a digital team working for them, it should not be difficult to put together some digital advertising to remind citizens that registering to vote, or updating their address when they go to the DMV for other business is easy and convenient.

And that goes double for registering to vote when applying for food stamps, TANF, or other benefit program. Clinton’s motor-voter law included pubic benefits centers. So an additional digital outreach effort should be made to remind citizens that when they apply for benefits, that is a good time to register to vote, or simply update their address.

And given voter suppression tactics such as sending out letters that look like junk mail asking voters to verify their address and purging those who do not respond, Democrats need to develop education efforts, including expensive TV advertising, to remind voters to do this and consequently remind voters that the Republicans in power are using tax dollars to suppress the vote.

And if Democrats fail to to this, the Green Party should pick up the cause and do this most important work. It would be a great way to expose Democratic hypocrisy and cover the Green Party in the glory of voting rights. If the Green Party fails to seize the opportunity, the Democratic Socialists of America need to step up to the defence of voting rights.

I am in the process of teaching myself animation so that I can make these kinds of videos, to provide exactly this sort of voter education. But with any luck someone more skillful than I will rise to the occasion and create better videos than I could ever hope to.

Local party committees need to think about voter registration in a new way. For openers, every local committee should have a voter assistance advocate who works closely with the chair of the voter registration committee. The job of the voter assistance advocate would be to organize assistance for those voters who lack the documents for registration.

Voter ID laws have, in effect, negated mail in voter registration. So voter registration drives will have to go back to organizing voter registration events. Some location will have to be found, a church, sympathetic law office, or some other location where citizens would be invited to come to register to vote. You would need music, food, drinks (non-alcoholic), voter registration forms, and, above all, a copier so that people could make copies of their ID.

Beware, Republican trolls and their video saboteurs, will target such events, so it will be necessary to have a plan as to how to deal with them.

It will be necessary for the voter assistance advocate to attend such events to meet with every citizen who lacks the necessary ID documents to register, and develop a plan to help them acquire those documents. It will be necessary to have a budget to assist these citizens in the event that they cannot pay the fees necessary to obtain their documents as well as to provide transportation to the DMV or wherever they need to go to obtain their documents. And if the Democrats fail to do this, the Green Party needs to pick up the slack. This is a great way to make inroads into the Democratic base, by demonstrating that the Green Party can deliver results where the Democratic party only talks. And if the Green Party fails to seize this opportunity, the Democratic Socialists of America need to step up and demonstrate the concrete benefits of socialism.

It will also be necessary to enlist churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and houses of worship of any nature to encourage them to keep voter registration forms on the premises and permit members to use their copy machines to copy their ID documents. The same would apply to union halls, although union membership so small these days that we cannot look to unions to turn this around.

When I revise my book, The precinct captain’s guide to political victory, it will be necessary to update the sections on voter registration and fighting voter suppression. In the mean time the sections on gathering signatures for nominating petitions, visibility, canvassing, phone banking, and the rest remain relevant and will lead you to victory.