September 14, 2008
Massive voter caging by McCain campaign?
From state after state come reports of massive mailings by the McCain campaign of absentee ballot requests that contain confusing, misleading or simply wrong information. Is the McCain campaign merely incompetent? Or is it engaged in a massive effort to create a database of voters to challenge at the polls? Is the McCain campaign orchestrating a voter caging campaign on a grand scale?
Given the track record of the GOP in Florida in 2000 there is no reason to give McCain and the Republicans the benefit of the doubt this time around. Greg Palast has provided extensive documentation of their success in denying the right to vote to thousands of legitimate voters. Go to www.gregpalast.com and read all about it if you have any doubts. So let’s assume that the mailings of absentee ballot requests to voters in swing states who did not request them is simply a new weapon in the Republican voter suppression arsenal.
How widespread is this? So far reports have come in from VA, OH, CO, NC, PA, FL, NM, WI, OR, CA and MN. Here’s a sampling of the info available so far. Read the rest of this entry »
August 31, 2008
You can make elections better: Sign up for Pollworkers for Democracy
You can make a difference! Pollworkers for Democracy is a program designed to involve ordinary citizens in the elections process this November. Here’s the description from the Pollworkers for Democracy website:
Pollworkers for Democracy is an effort to recruit, train, and network 5,000 citizen pollworkers for the November 4, 2008 election and beyond. Official pollworkers have a vital role in running fair, accountable elections in which all eligible voters are able to cast their ballots and have them counted.
Join us as a pollworker on the front lines of democracy this November 4, or learn more about the program here — http://act.credoaction.com/pollworkers/index.html
Take a look at the opinions about the important role played by citizens working at the polls during elections. There is a pressing need for more and better workers in election offices across the country.
[Poll workers are] the foundation upon which democracy rests…the cornerstone of democracy is the right to vote, but to be able to exercise that right there must be polling places and poll workers.
– Victor Salazar, Fresno County Clerk, quoted in the Fresno Bee, April 21, 2006
If the criminal justice system didn’t have access to jurors, the criminal justice system wouldn’t exist. Poll workers are just as important as jurors.
–DeForest Soaries, chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, quoted by the Associated Press
Where’s the next generation of poll workers? We need passion about this whole process and civic participation.
– Kay J. Maxwell, president of the U.S. League of Women Voters, quoted in a 2004 Associated Press article
As long as they’re breathing and they can walk in, we have to take them. The people we hire for the most part are elderly, uneducated, and frequently unemployed.
– Barbara Jackson, Baltimore’s director of elections, quoted in USA Today
POLLWORKERS FOR DEMOCRACY NEEDS YOU!
SIGN UP TODAY!
July 28, 2008
What impact will displaced voters have on the 2008 election?
Overlooked in the discussions of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the bursting of the housing bubble is the plight of these formerly stable homeowners when it comes to being able to vote in the upcoming Presidential election.
The numbers of those who have lost their homes just this year is staggering. Almost a million homes lost in the first six months of this year:
Foreclosures are up 120%. Some 220,000 homes were lost to repossession in the last quarter, and another 739,714 entered foreclosure in the first quarter. That’s one in every 171 American homes involved in what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson euphemistically calls the “housing correction”…. http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2008/7/28/142127/083 Read the rest of this entry »
