BLUE STATE BLUES Can safe state voters make a difference? BY BETH SCHWARTZAPFEL

Despite being somewhat taken for granted during the recent presidential election, Rhode Islanders did their best to capitalize on the benefits of being from a safe state.

For one, safe state voters can use their votes to make a statement, or, as Ralph Nader famously said in 2000, to "vote their conscience." As chair of the political action committee Greens for Impact, Providence City Councilor David Segal encouraged safe state voters to vote for Green Party candidate David Cobb, and voters from swing states to vote for Kerry. "The electoral college is archaic," Segal says, but it "provides a nice loophole for third parties" to run a candidate "without worrying about the spoiler effect." (The folks at the Web site www.repentantnadervoter.com sold nose clips in the lead-up to the election, so progressives could hold their nose while voting for Kerry. No nose clips necessary for safe state voters, no sir!) Cobb nonetheless managed to attract only a few thousand votes in Rhode Island.

Jennifer Thomas, a Brown graduate student who worked in Kerry’s Rhode Island headquarters, notes that, with the Ocean State in the bag for Democrats, Rhode Islanders could focus their energy elsewhere. "The important thing for the blue states," she explains, "was to turn their view outwards." Thomas organized buses carrying up to 100 people to New Hampshire, the closest swing state to Rhode Island, during every weekend leading up to the election. David Riley, a Democratic voter from the Fox Point neighborhood of Providence, spent two weekends in New Hampshire; he made phone calls, held signs on street corners, went door to door, and handed out leaflets at shopping centers. He says Kerry’s New Hampshire was impressed by how many Rhode Islanders turned up. "It makes me proud of Rhode Island," Riley says.

Physically leaving the state was not the only way to make a difference. Volunteers at phone banks throughout Rhode Island made calls to New Hampshire, Florida, Maine, and New Mexico. The first round of calls, explains Thomas, was "polling calls," to get a feel for what issues were important to swing state voters. The next round was "persuasion calls," which involved calling undecided voters and trying to convince them to vote Democratic, using the information collected from the polling calls. The last round was to make sure people had the basic information they needed about polling locations, and what to do with absentee ballots. "Blue state phone banks were a really good resource for the Kerry campaign," Thomas says.

The Internet was another gathering place for outward-looking blue state voters. Democracy for America (formerly Dean for America, referred to online as DFA), the Web site established by Democratic nomination contender Howard Dean, features a Blog for America (www.blogforamerica.com), where voters from all over the country engaged on various issues. DFA has spawned a network of state-based Web sites, including Democracy for Rhode Island (www.democracyforri.org). Democracy for Rhode Island is somewhat sleepy — at this writing, its last posting was on October 16 — but such sites nevertheless aim to bring national politics down to a local level. Further, www.moveon.org and its sister political action committee, MoveOn PAC, rallied safe staters and swing staters alike to host parties and yard sales to raise money for progressive candidates.

Ultimately, though, one of the most potent benefits of being from a safe state may lie not in Washington, but in our own backyard. At least in Providence, Segal says, "It’s sort of nice to know that there’s a basic shared worldview, a basic shared political ideology." And although a different outcome would obviously be preferable, at least when George W. Bush was elected, Segal says, "You can mourn with people."