Getting out the voteIt’s 9:24 a.m. and Bend Area Transit (BAT) bus number three buzzes along its route through the city’s south side, picking up passengers headed for destinations as diverse as its individual riders, when Annis Henson, seated in the second row, starts speaking out about voter registration and the November election.
Henson grips a clipboard snapped shut on brochures, voter registration forms and a pen. Everyone on the bus swings to attention at the sound of her voice.
"If you haven’t registered to vote yet, I can help you do that this morning," Henson says. "If you’re 17 years old on or before October 14 and you turn 18 by November 3 you can register to vote in the state of Oregon." She answers a bus rider’s question about registering if someone just moved here from out of state. She passes him the clipboard and he begins filling out a voter registration form. At Henson’s count that’s 70 people she’s now registered.
Henson is a member of Citizens for Bend Area Transit (C-BAT), a group of volunteers working to spread the word about a ballot proposal that would create a transit district for Bend and transfer BAT’s operating expenses from the city budget to a permanent property tax increase - 39.3 cents per $1,000 of a home’s assessed value, or about $48 a year for a home assessed at $287,000.
