Yesterday my friend Liz and I volunteered to register voters, so we headed off to Wal*Mart, clipboards in hand, decorated with our “Yes I can register you to vote” buttons. We had been warned not to go too close to the storefront, as Wal*Mart had not been too thrilled with previous voter registration volunteers approaching (harassing?) their shoppers. Stationed across from the entrance in the parking lot, we interacted with a handful of people (including one young woman who seemed to be confusing her voter registration with her car registration) for about 15 minutes or so before a security car pulled up and told us we had to leave. The man was kind and said that we were doing a “good thing” but that it wasn’t allowed on the premises.

From there we moved down the road to the Cheltenham Mall, where again we interacted with shoppers coming and going from the entrance for about 15 minutes before another security guard pulled up. This one stayed in his car at first, and I watched him speaking to someone on his radio out of the corner of my eye while I continued to register voters. One voter in particular expressed how grateful he was that we were there, saying that he had gone searching at other shopping centers to find registration volunteers. Eventually the security guard got out of his car, told us we were “doing a good thing” but that there was a “code of conduct” and we had to leave. He then radioed whomever he was speaking with before saying, “The subjects have been advised that they need to leave” while he sat in his car, watching us as we walked away. Another car then backed up to us, and a man who turned out to be an off-duty cop asked us what had happened. He was pretty upset that we had been told to leave, but it came down to the fact that the shopping center is private property and that they can manage it however they choose.

From there we just stood out on the sidewalk by the small shops on Mt. Airy Ave, and got a few more registrations before we headed back for the evening. The question still remains, however: Why would Wal*Mart and Cheltenham Mall not want people registering to vote in their parking lots??