On Friday afternoon, Jo Trafford knocked on doors up and down hallways of a building in the Hyacinth Place complex in Westbrook. As people answered their doors, Trafford introduced herself and asked if they had plans to vote.
A woman at the end of the hallway opened her front door as Trafford was talking to her neighbor, curious about what Trafford was discussing. She admitted to being unsure about voting because of “all the drama” in national politics, and because she was afraid to make an uninformed decision.
“Just forget the drama, and say ‘what are my values? What’s important to me?’” Trafford said. “You don’t have to solve the problems of the world. Just look up two or three things that are important to you, and you can vote.”
Trafford and three other volunteers knocked on dozens of doors last Friday afternoon as part of neighbor-to-neighbor canvassing organized by the League of Women Voters of Maine, an offshoot of the national nonpartisan organization working to expand voting rights. Every week or so, volunteers knock on doors, hand out information in multiple languages on voting and help people register to vote, focusing on people in low-income housing, including immigrants.