Ferguson's ballot box protest: voter registration up 25 percent since shooting

New voter registration numbers suggest that the Michael Brown shooting has kindled a new sense of civic engagement among many Ferguson, Mo., residents.

|
Whitney Curtis/Reuters
Protesters gather near the police department in Ferguson, Mo., last week.

After fiery protests in the wake of the death of Michael Brown, residents of Ferguson, Mo., are preparing to raise their voices in another way: They're registering to vote.

A constant theme underlying the tensions surrounding the shooting of Mr. Brown centered on the fact that a large majority of Ferguson residents are black, while the city council and police department are overwhelmingly white. Brown, who was unarmed, was black, while the police officer who shot him is white.

One key factor in the racial divide between the governed and the governing was low voting rates. For example, this past April, when Ferguson’s white mayor, James Knowles, was reelected to a three-year term, only 1,484 ballots were cast – about 12 percent of registered voters at the time.

Since the Aug. 9 shooting, however, more than 3,000 people in the Missouri city of 21,000 have registered to vote. That represents a increase of more than 25 percent in voter registration in just two months. Total voters registered in Ferguson are now 14,428 as of mid-day Thursday, and still rising, according to the St. Louis County Board of Elections.

The rise in registrations is a sign that outrage spawned by Mr. Brown’s death – and by an initial police response to protests that was seen as callous and heavy handed – may be translating into civic engagement.

The protests on Ferguson’s streets have already resulted in some changes in Ferguson. The city council has announced plans for a civilian review board for the police, and Police Chief Tom Jackson has issued a public apology to the Brown family for the loss of their son, even as a grand jury is weighing possible criminal charges against the police officer who shot Brown.

“Protest is very important to shake up communities and mobilize electoral coalitions” that expand diversity in government, says Christine Marie Sierra, a University of New Mexico political scientist who focuses on issues of race, ethnicity, and gender in government. But she says minority empowerment in US cities typically hinges on electing new leaders “who will bring forward different perspectives and different policies.”

Although the November election doesn’t involve municipal offices, events in Ferguson have been playing a role in St. Louis County campaigns. And come April, some city council seats in Ferguson will come up for election.

The county has an Oct. 8 deadline for people to be eligible to vote on Nov. 4.

The new voter enrollments already push Ferguson well above the national average for registrations. In 2012, some 71 percent of voting-age American citizens were registered (and 62 percent voted). In Ferguson, the US Census Bureau finds nearly 29 percent of the population to be under 18, which means that more than 90 percent of the population is registered.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Ferguson's ballot box protest: voter registration up 25 percent since shooting
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/1002/Ferguson-s-ballot-box-protest-voter-registration-up-25-percent-since-shooting
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe