We Care, We Count and We Voted!

Civic participation is the foundation of democracy. Unfortunately, many individuals in West Virginia are left out of the democratic process, either from a sense of disempowerment, a lack of understanding of the issues, or because they don’t know their rights.

Encouraging civic participation is a major part of OVEC’s ongoing work. In our own small way, we help work on the nationwide problem of declining citizen civic involvement.

In 2004, thanks to the Janelia and Public Welfare foundations, OVEC launched its first-ever voter registration/get-out-the-vote (GOTV) project, "We Care, We Count, We Vote." OVEC’s intern, Scott Straight, and organizer Abe Mwuara led this effort.

We carried out our non-partisan voter registration and voter information project in partnership with the Huntington-Cabell Branch of NAACP and Marshall (University) Action for Peaceful Solutions (MAPS).

We focused our efforts on Huntington’s District 5, a majority African-American, low-income district.

OVEC trained 45 volunteers for voter registration canvassing, who devoted hundreds of hours to the GOTV project.

We are proud to say we registered 1,177 people –17% of all new voter registrations in Cabell County.