NBA players made a concerted effort to promote voter registration from the league's bubbleNBAE/GETTY IMAGES
The NBPA said that almost all eligible voters within its membership "are now registered, something that had been a major undertaking inside the NBA's restart bubble at Walt Disney World -- where the app players downloaded to learn their way around the bubble even included directions," according to Tim Reynolds of the AP. More than half of the NBA's arenas, all of which would be otherwise sitting empty on election day, "have either been registration-drive sites or will serve as polling locations -- a player demand when the season was nearly called off in August because of more racial unrest," and the More Than A Vote group "has already recruited 20,000 poll workers for election day around the country" (AP, 10/8). In California, Kyle Goon goes with the header, "How LeBron James And His NBA Generation Grew Their Voices, Influenced The Next Ones" (ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, 10/8).
SLAM DUNK: In Atlanta, Sarah Spencer notes early voting in Georgia begins Oct. 12 and State Farm Arena will stay open for seven days a week, ending Oct 30. Voting machines arrived onsite yesterday. Hawks CEO Steve Koonin said, "We're treating this like we would a game, in the sense that we have greeters, we have customer-service people, we have more than just a short staff of poll workers. We have the whole infrastructure, including security, that will be part of the process." He added, "If we're as successful as I hope we are and think we are, we might have to rethink, how can we continue this." The amount of voting machines onsite "has been tripled from 100 to 300, and the amount of staff has been doubled to approximately 300." More than 200 Hawks and State Farm Arena full-time employees "have been deputized by Fulton County to serve as election workers, with 70 poll clerks plus seven poll managers on site per day." Approximately 300 team members are "participating overall (they have been excused from day-to-day operations to help out with the election." Koonin said that the Hawks also are "providing meals for poll workers while they're on-site." They are projecting "more than 50,000 voters over the 19 days" (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 10/8).
