Local sets out to rock the vote

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

Jay Sigal is serious about voting.
So serious that he’s selling the majority of what he owns, including his Ford pickup, to finance a 10-month zigzagged trek across the country where he plans to stop in cities large and small to encourage people to vote.


The endeavor, dubbed Elect to Vote, is the result of Sigal’s dismay that only 56.70 percent of the eligible voters in the U.S., according to the Federal Elections Commission, cast ballots during the 2004 General Election.
Emphasizing that his lengthy road trip is nonpartisan, Sigal said he doesn’t care who people vote for, only that they vote.
“I have absolutely no horse in this race,” Sigal said. “[Voting] is a civic duty. We all ought to participate in the government we’re run by.”
Sigal said he plans to depart Santa Barbara sometime next week. He’s equipped his 34-foot recreational vehicle with a computer and plans to videotape people he meets along the way to one day make a documentary. He also said he will maintain a daily blog.
A self admitted political talk show junky, the 57-year-old Sigal said he doesn’t have all of the plans hammered out yet and does not honestly know what to expect when hits the open road.
“What I’m really trying to do is execute this project without expectations,” he said.
The day before he rolls into a destination city or town, Sigal said he plans to contact local chapters of the Hash House Harrier running group, of which he is a longtime member in Santa Barbara. He said he hopes the group will send him to places that will be good to talk with people.
Exactly what he’ll say to those people, he doesn’t really know. He suspects he will interview many of the people about why they do not vote and tell them why he thinks they should.
When Sigal hits the road, he said he plans to head north to Santa Maria, San Francisco and Sacramento, and then back down through California to Los Angeles, where he’ll head east. Once he hits the Atlantic Ocean, he said he’ll begin making his way back west, but plans to cross the country a third time and give the 454 Chevrolet engine a rest in Florida on Nov. 4, the date of the General Election.
Sigal, a contractor and photographer, said the idea for the trip first came to him after the home he was renting was sold. He then found himself looking for a place to live, but after having little luck, found himself sleeping with his two cats on the patio at his friend’s house.
Then the idea “exploded in my mind,” he said, to buy the RV and embark on a new adventure.
“It’s a little scary,” Sigal said. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m really striking out on my own.”
While Sigal declined to say if he has a preferred political party, or who he plans to vote for, he noted that the prospect of having a woman or black man as president is exciting on its own.
“For the U.S., we are at a stopping off point,” he said. “Things will never be the same again. We’re going to end up with a very unusual set of circumstances no matter who wins.”
When his trip ends, Sigal said he’s not sure what he’ll do or where he’ll settle. But he hopes someone is able to continue Elect to Vote into the future, with the goal to one day see as much as 80 percent of the population voting.
While his emphasis over the next year will be on the presidential election, Sigal said increased voter turnout needs to be spurred in local elections as well.
A perfect example of lagging interest in municipal elections, he said, was the City of Santa Barbara’s 2007 municipal election last November, in which 37.1 percent of the city’s registered voters turned out. Sigal said this number is “appalling.”
“The more people we get out to vote the more respectable our future government will be,” he said while sitting behind a table in his RV that was parked along Cabrillo Blvd. last week. “As we move forward into our country’s future, I see Joe citizen becoming more important to the process.”
More information about Elect to Vote is available at www.electtovote.net. Sigal said the trip is entirely self-financed, but if someone would like to donate to his cause, they can do so on the Web site.