Can Rhode Island Voters Make a Difference in Swing States?

A national campaign is targeting Democrats to help fund voting efforts in key battleground states

Rick Brooks, a volunteer for the Movement Voter Project, speaks during a recent event at the Blue Room in Cranston.
Rick Brooks, a volunteer for the Movement Voter Project, speaks during a recent event at the Blue Room in Cranston.
Ian Donnis/The Public’s Radio
Share
Rick Brooks, a volunteer for the Movement Voter Project, speaks during a recent event at the Blue Room in Cranston.
Rick Brooks, a volunteer for the Movement Voter Project, speaks during a recent event at the Blue Room in Cranston.
Ian Donnis/The Public’s Radio
Can Rhode Island Voters Make a Difference in Swing States?
Copy

A recent get-together of more than 50 people at the Blue Room, a bar and music venue in the Pawtuxet Village section of Cranston, was part of a national campaign called the Movement Voter Project. The idea is to raise money from supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in predictably blue and red states — and funnel it to grassroots groups to mobilize voters in the swing states that will decide the November election.

“The approach in MVP is completely different,” said Rick Brooks, one of the dozen or so volunteers organizing the Movement Voter Project in Rhode Island.

Brooks said the project is a far more targeted approach than old standbys like mailing postcards to out-of-state voters or opening a campaign office in a strip plaza for a few months before an election.

“They’re investing in organizations that have been in existence, that have credibility, have a track record and are going to be there a day after the election, win or lose,” Brooks said.

The groups getting money through the Movement Voter Project focus on issues popular among Democrats like abortion rights, immigrants’ rights and voting rights.

This story was reported by The Public’s Radio. You can read the entire story here.

Trump revives a long-running fight over a protected Atlantic marine monument, pitting fishing interests against conservation advocates
Friends and faculty paid tribute to Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov who were killed in the December campus shooting
From the governor’s race to domestic violence realities, a week that sharpened the focus
Firefighters from across Rhode Island were called in to battle the flames. No injuries have been reported thus far.
Sheriff Paul Heroux cited the federal government’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis as a key reason to reduce information-sharing