On September 29th, I sat down with local leader and holder of the world’s biggest heart, Sarah Cerkvenik. Sarah is a senior at Saint Louis University majoring in Women and Gender Studies and Social Work. In the fall of 2018, Sarah began volunteering for HeadCount by registering people to vote at concerts and events across St. Louis. When the St. Louis team leader, Tom Bergan, graduated, Sarah and SLU junior Rebecca Pirtle took over the St. Louis team.
But what the heck is HeadCount, anyway?
Read into this conversation on registering to vote, HeadCount, and voter suppression below.
Transcript
How would you define HeadCount?
Headcount is–the best way to describe it is that it’s this combination of democracy, music, and action. That’s what they get their mission to be. I have a shirt with those words bolded on it. They talk about fusion of those three things. So it’s a non-partisan non-profit that combines concerts and music artists and venues. The point of it is to combine music and artists and venues with this process of democracy: registering people to vote, taking an action, and they have other actions beyond that. The basic concept of HeadCount is “let’s register as many people we can to vote at some of these music-type venues.” That what the brainchild. Because people are going to be at these concerts and spaces anyways, so why not take the political actions to them.
It was actually founded by Bob Weir, who is one of the people of the Grateful Dead. This really iconic band with this huge fanbase. This guy Andy Bernstein co-founded it, and is now the Executive Director and CEO. They came up with this idea of “let’s bring the music and the action to where the people are gonna be anyway” so at every single Grateful Dead show there’s gonna be a HeadCount stand and they have these things called participation rows where they get a bunch of different nonprofits to be engaging with folks at these concerts.
So, the basic overview is that it’s this nonpartisan nonprofit that is just trying to register people to vote through the means of music and concerts.
So it’s a national organization, how do you fit into that being in St. Louis?
They’re national but they have different branches in select US cities. It’s completely volunteer fueled. So if you’re a volunteer and you live in St. Louis and you’re like: “Oh I want to create a team here” you’re more than welcome to do that. And thats what happened with Tom Bergan who started the team in St. Louis, my lovely friend from undergrad. And when he graduated he was like “Hey Sarah youre really invested in this work do you want to take over.”
So the position is called a team leader and the three of us in st louis took it over and split up the work.
So you’ve done 19 Headcount shows?
Yeah- it’s been a huge variety of them. The cool thing about HeadCount is that it gives you access to genres and artists that you would never seek out yourself. So I’ve done a reggae show and an EDM show and I just did a country americana show and I would have never gone to the shows if i hadn’t had a headcount pass
So you go to these shows and what do you do when you’re there? How is the groundwork facilitated?
What you get when you start as a team leader is a kit from our national team in New York. And so there’s a really small but mighty team in New York full time, those are like paid employees and they send you out material. Forms, clipboards, voter registration application, and merch. So well have a group between 2-6 volunteers at the shows and we’ll engage and canvass with the entire show.
HeadCount is really trying to do a lot of work to get into a lot of community events because there’s this huge economic barrier that prevents people from going to shows. Like the average Ariana Grande ticket is probably at least $100. sIMILAR to Pageant shows you’re spending at least $20-40 on a seat in those shows. So doing community events like PRIDE or Shakespeare in the Park or the Hispanic Festival. All of those efforts are free festivals where people have access to voting without paying for it. Really trying to work toward reaching all groups of people and not just more affluent folks who can afford going to a show is a huge goal of HeadCount as well. HeadCount is trying to bring access to everyone. In an era when sometimes registering to vote is getting harder, HeadCount is trying to bring resources to everyone who needs them. Texas has really strict voting laws, so like I can’t register people from Texas to vote. I have to turn people away.
How else do states make it more difficult for people to vote or register to vote?
Just in terms of registering to vote, different states require different forms of identification. Kentucky and Tennessee require full social security numbers. Sometimes people are uncomfortable giving that and writing it down. Having a more strict policy on what identification the states accept can restrict people from registering to vote, especially from young folks who don’t know that information or don’t have access to someone who knows it immediately. Some states require you to put your party or race or ethnicity down. If people don’t know where they fit, requiring those pieces of information can deter people from wanting to register.
What does canvassing mean to you?
Canvassing is kind of the process of trying to engage with and interact with people in our case asking a really basic question being “are you registered to vote at your current address?” When I canvass its me holding my clipboard talking to folks saying “Hey how’s it going? Are you registered to vote?” It’s a little bit random, like you’re going to a concert and you’re not expecting to be asked that question. So it’s cool to give them kind of like a segway to explain.
So I’m sure the crowd you met at PRIDE St. Louis was entirely different than the crowd at the Dave Matthews Band?
It’s totally different and the energy is really different. It’s a combination of how engaged the artist is with the artist and with political action. Sometimes the artist will encourage or discourage political action, which sort of depends on the artist. I went to the Coetzl concert, who’s a Texas-based artist who is a fusion of rock, folk and Americana. So many people came up to me and were like “What are you doing here? He would never want this.” Meaning co isn’t politically engaged and they are saying he would never want people to register to vote at his concert, he doesn’t care about registering to vote.
Whereas at the Ari show fans were running up to me, they were so excited. They were saying they were seeing all this publicity about it. Many of them waited to register to vote so they could do it at Ari’s show. It was super exciting to them. I once had a two girls at PRIDE run up to me and say “YOU registered us?” how cool is it to talk to people and to say “now you can go home from college and say mom, dad, I got registered to vote at a Black Keys concert?” Like, that’s so cool.
Sometimes an artist can really encourage people to be super excited about registering to vote, and sign on Headcount to tour with them. Black Keys, Maggie Rogers, Louis the Child, and Sleater Kinney are all partners. Ariana Grande even had a short video at her show about this group that she’s partnering with that’s sole point is registering people to vote and encouraging political action.
Regardless of how the artist feels we can always deflect to being nonpartisan. People at shows will always say really partisan things to us and we have to remind them that we’re not. We’re doing something unifying, and that’s super cool.
So let’s say I’m a fan of LANY and I go to the show. Would the papers that I would sign at the show with Headcount immediately make me ready to vote?
Sort of. So you sign a paper, like the application forms, you have to fill out that information which is like your name, your address, and a form of identification which is either the number on your driver’s license or the last four of your social and then you sign it an you date it. You sign that, I put that in a folder, and the next day I send it to our national headquarters. They process it and go through that information. That gets shipped from all different states where you sign it from. Usually the application time is 4-6 weeks. Even if you were to fill out a Missouri registration form and bring it to the city it’s still going to take 3-5 weeks to get your voter card in the mail that confirms that you’re registered.
But you can always look up your voter status online which says if you’re registered or not faster than the mail comes.
When you register to vote do you need to register before every election?
No! We get questions like that all the time. There’s a huge lack of voter education in our country in general and so one other thing that HeadCount does is educates. This is a process that everyone who votes has to go through at some time. It’s an opt-in process right now. Meaning, if you want to register to vote you have to opt-in to the system and register to vote. Whereas some states have decided to have opt-out programs in which you are automatically registered to the programs and you opt-out from participating.
What impact does the opt-in policy of voter registration have?
Opt-in makes it harder to vote because people have to take the initiative to register themselves and it sometimes is really complicated if you’re not being guided through it. A lot of people, again, don’t know. A lot of people think that when you turn 18 you’re automatically registered to vote and that just happens, which is only in a few states like wyoming, New Mexico and North Dakota. All have automatic registration at 18 .
I think ideally hcs goal is to work itself out of business. So one day there will have been enough voter education and advocacy that we don’t have to have an opt-in policy anymore and opt-out policy can nationally be restored. So that everyone is registered and you decide if you don’t want to be anymore. That’s a really interesting working part of a group that actively wants to work itself out of business, that is a goal. We don’t want hc to have to exist anymore. I think good nonprofits structure themselves that way.
While HeadCount is registering people to vote, we have a lot of messaging that comes out with our organization. Some of those are about voter education and advocacy.
You only register when you have to change a significant portion of information. Usually thats an address. So let’s say you move. So like I’m from Minnesota for example. For the primary I voted in Minnesota and then I changed my address to my st louis address and voted in missouri where I currently live. When I moved off campus from my on campus residence i changed my address again. So you only are updating your application when you’re changing a name, changing an address, or maybe you get a different drivers license and if you registered with it that could warrant a change or update.
So what do you do if you’ve moved states and you don’t want to change your voter address, what does that look like?
That’s the absentee process. The absentee process kind of allows folks to have multiple homes and they decide where they prefer their vote to be. So let’s say college student from their hometown in Minnesota you reside in Missouri you can make a choice. Do you want to vote in Minnesota or do you want to vote in Missouri. You get to decide your home base. You have to go through the process on your own pace. So let’s say I as a Missouri resident wanted to stay voting in Minnesota You have to go through the process of ordering an absentee ballot for your state and then mailing it back in. It’s incredibly difficult and takes a lot of initiative on the person to know where to file, remember to order it, and to send it back. A lot of times in the process there are complaints about it getting lost. It’s mail, so it’s really easy for it to get lost or for you to order it too late and to not get it on time.
I know someone from SLU who’s absentee ballot didn’t come in on time so they drove four and a half hours home to vote in person the day of. I think it’s kind of a common thing. Imagine the resources and knowledge and care you have to have in order to pull something like the absentee process off.
When we just had our Voter Registration Drive on campus, where we registered 309 people to vote, we were trying to advertise all of those options really clearly. We were reminding that choosing the absentee process needs to be decided 2-5 months ahead because there’s a lot going on. I’m a huge fan of “googling it,” but also HeadCount.Org has step-by-step processes. Vote.org also breaks it down state-by-state. They’ll direct you to order an absentee ballot from the Secretary of State.
Other than, “Do you have to register to vote before every election?” what other questions do people ask you while canvassing and engaging with music goers and folks? Shouldn’t people already know that?
Truly what I get all the time is “register for what? Vote for what?” I was describing the confusion people have when they see us at music venues and concerts. I think they’re honestly surprised at what we are doing.
I also get a lot of questions about how long the paperwork will take. I always stress that it will literally take 60 seconds to fill out paperwork. It really is super quick. I always tell people that it’s so much better to have people do it with us right now because it’s right in front of you and you won’t forget it and we’ll make sure it gets processed.
When we did PRIDE we registered 367 people to vote. At SLU’s campus we registered 309. I’ve had shows where I’ve registered one person to vote, it’s so varied. It’s about having really quality interactions with people. Every one person we get is one person who is registered to vote. It’s super valuable, and it’s super valuable to get just one person.
It’s insane that so many people don’t know how to register. They don’t know to register every time your address changes or your name changes.
Every single show I have every worked, people have been really grateful for us. Someone sees us and says “thank you for what you’re doing, thank you for your work” at every show, which means a ton.
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Voting is an insane thing that we have the right to do. Think about how you registered to vote (if you have yet), was it complicated? What parts of the process were unclear? Where were you when you registered?
In Missouri politics, conservative parties have been pushing a photo-ID mandate for voting. To the naked eye, this potential change isn’t that big of a deal. After all, we usually bring our licenses to vote, anyway. However, what happens for people who don’t have a driver’s license? If you don’t have a driver’s license, it’s probably more unlikely that you’re going to have a different form of photo ID, like a passport. Putting more restrictions on who can vote means that people experiencing different forms of oppression because of various held identities will be less able to cast their ballot.
The first step is making sure everyone can hit the polls. Volunteer with HeadCount.