EVERETT — Michael Trujillo stood outside Everett Mall on Wednesday clipboard in hand, calling out to people passing by.
“Are you registered to vote, sir?” he asked one young man.
“Nope.”
“Would you like to?” he said to the retreating man.
“No, I’m good.”
Trujillo, who chairs the Cascade View and Twin Creeks neighborhood associations, and Brenda Bolanos-Ivory, a grassroots organizer for the League of Women Voters of Snohomish County, came out for a few hours of voter registration, chatting up people even if they were already registered.
Early on they got the name and number of a 19-year-old woman who had just registered and was excited to be voting for the first time. She also wanted to get more involved in civic life, and Trujillo was happy to connect her with the neighborhood groups.
“We all have to do our part,” Trujillo said. “If you don’t get involved, I don’t think you have a right to complain about the status quo.”
Tuesday was National Voter Registration Day. That’s when civic groups across the U.S. go out signing up new voters.
The local League of Women Voters chapter has two new focuses this year.
One is to give special attention to neighborhoods with lower historical voter turnout. Many of those lie in south Everett and have higher populations of minorities than elsewhere in the city. Records show significantly lower voter turnout in those neighborhoods than elsewhere in the city.
Another drive the league is getting behind is the idea of dividing Everett into electoral districts for the City Council.
“This time, we have a league position in favor of districting or a combination district-at-large elections as a means of getting better representation,” said Lois Wentink, a spokesperson for the league’s committee on districting.
The league is nonpartisan and does not endorse individual candidates, but it can take positions on issues after studying them and gaining support of the membership and board, Wentink said.
The districting issue came before the city’s Charter Review Committee over the summer, but the committee voted against recommending a measure be placed on November’s ballot.
Instead, the City Council assigned the issue to its general government subcommittee for study.
“It is my hope we will conclude our work by the end of the year,” said city Councilman Paul Roberts, who chairs the committee.
Roberts said he wasn’t sure if the committee would recommend another look at districting.
“I fully expect that the committee will, at a minimum, deal with the problem of voter turnout,” Roberts said.
If nothing else, the drive in south Everett should result in increased civic participation.
“We hope that when we register voters we will be able to direct them to a particular group that’s already meeting in the community,” such as a neighborhood organization, Wentink said.
That’s a challenge. Todd McNeal, the executive director of Hand in Hand, a nonprofit that serves families the Casino Road neighborhoods, said many Latino families in the neighborhood are undocumented. They can’t register to vote and don’t even have a path toward citizenship that will allow them to vote.
They do, however, want to participate in civic life, he said.
“We’ve got a group of youth who are really wanting to get involved in the schools in coaching and mentoring,” McNeal said.
Because many families in poverty work nights or odd hours, having youth involved also helps supervise children in the evenings.
At 3 p.m. Tuesday, league volunteers Bob Creamer and Ruth Brandon set up a table in the entryway of the Evergreen Branch of the Everett Public Library. They stacked the table with registration forms and brochures in English and Spanish, plus a couple of signs in Vietnamese.
“We thought we might be able to catch some of the parents with kids,” said Creamer, wearing a red, white and blue plastic derby.
Between the two library locations, Bolanos-Ivory said the league registered 27 new voters Tuesday.
Her stint with Trujillo at the Everett Mall on Wednesday wasn’t as successful, but it was worth it just getting people interested in participating.
Trujillo called to an older couple coming up to the mall.
“Are you registered to vote?”
“No, and I’ve been looking for you guys,” said Margaret Nelson, who, with her husband, Ken, had moved into the View Ridge neighborhood a few weeks ago.
As they filled out registration forms, Nelson explained they’d moved several times between retirement homes, and Ken, at least, hadn’t always kept up his registration.
It was just luck that brought them to the mall on Wednesday.
“I was going to look at the library. We just came here to take a walk,” she said.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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