I’m voting I voted for “That One” We’re coming down to the wire, and, before the weekend hits, I want to make a last-minute plea to everyone to VOTE EARLY. There is still time to vote early or to vote absentee in most states. Most states have “No Excuse” absentee or early voting, meaning you don’t need a reason for casting an early ballot. In other states, you’re supposed to have a reason, but the range of reasons is pretty broad. In Virginia, for example, the fact that you won’t be able to make it to the polls because of your work hours is a legitimate reason to vote early/absentee.
I voted in person in early October, and there wasn’t a line. There will be lines now, but they still won’t be as bad as they will be on Nov. 4. And it looks like many places will have in-person early voting for the next two Saturdays (Oct. 25 and Nov. 1). For more information on voting early/absentee, check out your State Board of Elections web site by looking it up here or use Obama’s early voting assistance web site.
“But, Ripley, they won’t count my absentee vote unless there’s a tie!” It is an urban legend that early and absentee votes are counted only in the case of a tie. They are counted just like regular votes. NPR covered this issue in a voting FAQ earlier this month.
Reasons to vote early/absentee:
1. You won’t have to wait in line for God-knows-how-long to vote on Election Day. I had to wait for almost two hours on primary day this year, and I went relatively late in the morning. It’s going to be much much worse on Nov. 4.
2. You can do something else on Election Day to help the campaign: drive other people to the polls, make last-minute calls to remind people to vote, be a poll observer, travel to a swing state where your help is needed more, or do something else to get out the vote.
3. There aren’t enough poll workers. Voting early reduces lines at the polls on Election Day, which not only alleviates pressure on the poll workers, but also frees you up to be a poll worker, if you so choose.
4.There aren’t enough polling machines and the ones we do have are not reliable. In 2004, Ohio became the Florida of the presidential election, with massive problems with their polling machines causing havoc, uncertainty and disenfranchisement throughout the state. Whether or not these problems cost John Kerry the election is still hotly debated.
5. You will have time to correct any problems with your voter registration. In the unlikely event that there is a problem with your registration, you will still have time to correct it if you vote early. If you don’t find out about a problem until Election Day, you most likely will have to fill out a provisional ballot, which is counted only once the problem is resolved. And provisional ballots are more likely to be rejected even though the vote might be valid.
6. Early voting neutralizes voter intimidation, voter caging, and other shenanigans designed to suppress (mostly Democratic) votes. For information about the range of problems that could happen on Election Day, check out this report from electionline.org and the Pew Center on the States and this report from Common Cause and the Century Foundation.
7. The more people who vote early, the more people willvote. There is a record number of newly registered voters this year. Many of these first-time voters won’t realize how long the lines will be. These new voters are more likely to be discouraged by the prospect of waiting in line for hours to vote and are more likely to leave without voting. This is especially true if the weather is bad on Election Day. If you don’t vote early for yourself, do it for others!
8. Because it helps the Obama campaign. Early voting is a keystone of Obama’s election strategy, and the campaign has set up a special web site to help people vote. If you don’t want your data to be added to his database, visit your State Board of Elections web site by looking it up here. So I can’t stress it enough: vote early. Do it for yourself. Do it for others. Do it for Obama/Biden. Do it for America’s future!
~Ripley
“Your ass is already on the line. The only question is, what are you gonna do about it?”
Captain O’Biden and myself did a little fall gardening this weekend in hopes of having a colorful garden in spring. It can sometimes be difficult to envision what the garden will look like in several months when it now just sits as a pile of recently disturbed soil. However I have faith in those daffodil bulbs, and the patience to wait for my springtime reward. My patience extends to the upcoming election. I know that our country’s problems won’t be solved in one day. We have to hunker down are really get to work, but there are no east fixes.
I do worry that the country’s apparent ADD and short-term memory will cause people to forget that all our goals, universal healthcare, balanced budget, healthy economy, secure borders, reduced gun violence, etc, will take a lot of hard work and time!. I worry this falls on deaf ears. After all no one this entire campaign season has remembered that John McCain was under investigation in the 1980’s when we were going through the Savings and Loan crisis. He was never charged with a crime, but … it was forgotten almost as quickly as the report finding that Sarah Palin abused her power as governor.
Why don’t people remember the past and learn from its lessons? I cannot believe that Sarah Palin admonished Joe Biden in the VP debate for not looking forward. Where are we going if we don’t know our point of origin?
My point is that the United States has serious problems and we need to identify all the problems and we cannot forget some in lieu of others. Then we must draw the solutions from every available port of information including our own past. Then we must implement our solutions, support President Obama, and above all exercise patience. Understand that it took 8 years to get into this mess and it will take time to repair, but like those spring daffodils, the rewards will be the first color in the gloom and bountiful for us and generations to come.
There are only 30 days left until Election Day. Are you registered to vote? Have you volunteered with the Obama campaign? Are you talking to your friends, parents, grandparents and co-workers about what makes Barack Obama such a great presidential candidate? Have you contributed to the campaign?
I know we all lead busy lives, but we have to work together to do everything we can to make sure Barack Obama is elected as our next president. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can bear to see yet another presidential election end like the 2000 and 2004 elections did. One thing we need to remember is that, while it gets the most attention, the presidential election isn’t the only thing we’re voting for on Election Day. We also have to make sure that other Democrats are elected to office this year.
Am I not enough inspiration for you? Well, today’s your lucky day. Leonardo DiCaprio, will i. am, Halle Berry, Dustin Hoffman, Ellen DeGeneres, Forest Whitaker, Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Silverman and a slew of other stars have joined to film a public-service announcement on the important issues that are at stake in this year’s election and exactly what it is that we’re all voting for. Watch it now. And then send it to all of your friends.
Apparently, John McCain’s proposals on taxes, Social Security, health care and the environment aren’t all that different from President Bush’s policies, according to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.I guess this isn’t all that surprising, since McCain voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007. The real difference, Davis said on Fox News Sunday, is in the approach.
According to Davis, President Bush’s approach was to tell Congress, “take it or leave it.”McCain, in contrast, will invite Congress to the White House to discuss the same Bush policies.I guess the McCain-Palin ticket is more of the same, but with a different approach.
Welcome to the Superheroes for Democracy blog! You’ve already met Ferosha, so let me introduce myself. I am Vulcanella and my role on this blog is to suss out illogical arguments made by the Republican party and shed a little light on the facts. So let’s get started!
I want to take a look at the latest decision the McCain ticket has made – the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican party’s vice-presidential nominee.
For the sake of argument, let’s put aside the notion that McCain has chosen Palin simply because she’s a woman and he thinks she can attract the disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters who are either unsure of or staunchly opposed to supporting the nominee of the Democratic party, Barack Obama.
There’s really no logical reason these self-proclaimed PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) women can call themselves democrats and at the same time be considering casting a vote for the newly-minted McCain-Palin ticket – not if they are true Hillary Clinton supporters. Let’s take a look at where Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton stand on the issues and we’ll let everyone decide for themselves if there’s much of a difference. (more…)
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