exercise

you right to vote!

The single most important right as an American citizen is the right to make your voice be heard. Speak out and vote this Tuesday, November 4. Polls are open from 7 AM until 8 PM. If you are in line when the polls close, don't leave. You are still allowed to cast your ballot. You cannot be denied this right as a registered voter even if you have unpaid bills, overdue taxes or a foreclosed home.




Please bring with you some sort if ID. This can be:

• a photo ID
  
  • student ID
    
  • Driver's license
    
  • employee ID
    
  • US passport
  
  
  
• non-photo ID
  
  • your paycheck
    
  • utility bill
    
  • bank statement that shows the address where you are registered
  
  
  
• your voter registration card

I wish I knew how to embed a video from youtube into this page, but click this five friends link to see a great non-partisan video with a good messsage.

Oh, a just to help your vote count the way you intend it:
Click here: snopes.com: Voting a Straight Ticket


"Straight Party Voting" Trap. Here are the details and what to do about it:

THE PROBLEM: "Straight party voting" on voting machines is revealing
a bad pattern of miscounting and omitting your vote, especially if you are a Democrat. Most recently (Oct. 2008), a firm called Automated Election Services was found to have miscoded the system in heavily Democratic Santa Fe County, New Mexico such that straight party voters would not have their presidential votes counted.

STRAIGHT PARTY VOTING is allowed in 15 states. Basically, it means that you can take a shortcut to actually looking at who you are voting for and instead just select a party preference. Then the voting machine makes your candidate choices, supposedly for the party you requested.

HOW TO PROTECT THE COUNT against the Straight Party Vote trap:

NEVER CHOOSE THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE OPTION, because it alerts the computer as to your party preference and allows software code to trigger whatever function the programmer has designed.

SEND THIS INFORMATION OUT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN, blog it, root n' toot it out there to get the word out.

ESPECIALLY GET THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, which have straight party voting options:

Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Mexico, North
Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina,
Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin


DEMAND COMPLETE AND CAREFUL TESTING OF THE STRAIGHT PARTY OPTION
IN LOGIC & ACCURACY TESTS

LOOK FOR UNDERVOTES (high profile races with lower-than-average number of votes cast) and flag them, post them, bring them to the attention of others for additional scrutiny.

Voting machine miscounts of straight party votes were proven by California researcher Judy Alter in the 2004 New Mexico presidential election; in Alabama Democrat straight party votes were caught going to a Republican, and Wisconsin a whole slew of straight party votes disappeared altogether. Both DRE and optical scan machines are vulnerable. Private contractors are involved; private firms like LHS Associates, Automated Election Services, Harp Enterprises, Casto & Harris and others will program almost all systems in the USA this November. ES&S scanners were involved in examples cited, but Diebold has also issued a cryptic Product Advisory Notice in 2006 about unexpected results from certain Straight Party option programming practices.


Where do I vote? Google has a US map to help you find out. You enter the address where you are registered and it gives the address of your polling place as well as a map of how to get there.


REGARDLESS WHO YOU ARE SUPPORTING, GET OUT AND VOTE on NOVEMBER 4, 2008