VOTER REGISTRATION--A TOP PRIORITY

WHEREAS, 55 million eligible Americans, half of them women and 9.7 million from minority groups, failed to register to vote in the last presidential election; and

WHEREAS, barriers to registration exist in many localities which discourage voter participation in the political process and thus a special effort needs to be made to inform citizens of the voter registration process; and

WHEREAS, many elections have been decided by very small margins and the issues in the 1984 presidential election are of utmost importance to union members and their families; and

WHEREAS, the AFL-CIO has called upon its affiliates to launch voter registration drives among their members as the first step toward victory in November:

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers designates September as Voter Registration Month and gives first priority to the registration of all AFT members; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT and its affiliates cooperate with other organizations whose goal it is to register the unregistered.