Sylvia Levin knows how she'll celebrate her 90th birthday today.
She'll travel to Malibu this afternoon, set up her card table and chairs outside the First Bank branch there and spend the next two hours asking passersby at the Malibu Colony Plaza shopping center if they're registered to vote.
Every Friday is Malibu day for Levin. Saturdays are Venice days. Sundays are spent at the farmer's market in Westwood Village. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, she's outside the post office at Westwood's Federal Building.
Six days a week for 34 years Levin has walked or traveled by bus around Los Angeles to sign up people to vote. So far she's registered more than 46,700. She knows: she's kept track.
This morning, before traveling to Malibu, Levin will hitch a ride from her Santa Monica home to Los Angeles City Hall, where council members will honor her dedication to the election process.
Levin says the honor has been all hers.
"I want to see everyone who is an American citizen be able to vote," she explained Thursday afternoon from behind her battered card table outside Westwood's post office. Postal workers there let her store her table and chairs inside, as do employees of the Malibu bank and the shops in Venice.
"Voting gives you the right to voice what's in your heart on paper -- on the ballot," she said. "People who are registering for the first time in their lives leave this table just flying. They know they've taken a big step."
Levin does not get paid for signing up new voters. The days of Los Angeles County deputy registrars receiving a 25-cent stipend for each person registered are long gone.
But no matter. She cannot think of a more rewarding way to spend her days, she says.
"Once a man in Malibu was watching me, and finally he came over and said, 'You're serving the public in a very big way. You should be proud of yourself.' " Levin said she was so surprised that she wrote down what he said on a scrap of paper that she has saved.
Over the decades she has registered voters at different locations -- outside Canter's deli in the Fairfax district, in Century City, at UCLA and Santa Monica College and outside Warner Hollywood Studios.
Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl first met her 30 years ago when she signed up voters outside Venice's Rose Cafe.
"She's an example of a person who has done more to make democracy work than anybody I know," said the Westside councilman, who wrote the resolution to be presented this morning.
