Election & Voting help.
Oct. 31st, 2004 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asherisFind your polling place:
MyPollingPlace.com will help you find out your precinct, and where your polling place is. For many precincts, they also have information about what kind of voting equipment you will be using, and how to use it.
If you need a ride to the polls: Call pretty much any candidate's office. Most of them will have volunteers on election day just for this purpose. You can also call organizations such as MoveOn.org (I will be offering some of my time election day to drive).
If you can: Let friends, family and neighbors know that you will be happy to give them a ride to the polls if they need one. If you live in an apartment building or condo, put up a sign near the mailboxes (most people stop by there every day) letting people know you will provide rides to the polls and give them some way to contact you. (Please DO NOT limit the ride offer to just people you agree with! Voting is about everyone getting a chance to have their say, whether you agree with them or not. Preferably, don't even ask who they're voting for.)
Know the Candidates:
Remember that it's not just the "big" ones. Many people will also be voting for local, county, and state judges; commissioners; school board; etc. These elections can have a major impact on your city, so remember to find out about those candidates, too, so you can make an educated choice in those races, too.
Project Vote Smart came about when "40 national leaders, including former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, formed Project Vote Smart (PVS) in 1992. Dedicated to upholding the ideal of democracy and serving the American people with unbiased and accurate information, PVS constructed a user-friendly voter's self-defense system accessible through a website and a toll-free hotline (1-888-VOTE-SMART) over a 10-year period."
The League of Women Voters is also a reliable source for non-partisan information. They send out questionnaires to the candidates, and print their responses. The national organization doesn't have information about local races, but your state's LWV group will most likely have a spot where you can put in your address and get a list of all the candidates that will be appearing on your ballot. (Their state sites usually use the domain name convention lwv(your 2-letter state abbreviation).org, ex: lwvmn.org or lwvny.org)
The League of Women Voters DNet (Democracy Net) project and Congress.org have joined together to offer candidate information. You can look up your address and find out what candidates will be on the ballot for the national races, see photos, get links to their website and email address, and read the candidates positions (from the LWV questionnaires).
Compare|Decide|Vote compares the positions of Bush and Kerry on 20 issues important to those ages 18-30.
Know Your Rights:
Election Protection 2004's Voters Bill of Rights, available in bilingual versions for many states.
For the most part, if you have not yet registered to vote, you are out of luck this year. EXCEPTIONS: Six states have same-day registration. These states are: Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE AT YOUR POLLING PLACE:
The MoveOn PAC has created a pdf document of four cards you can print out. The cards contain the phone numbers of national voter helplines: 1-866-MYVOTE1 and 1-866-OUR-VOTE. They also have numbers for DNC election helplines in the 16 states that have, in some way, shape, or form, already been having some problems with voting rights issues. (Okay, that last part may may be partisan, but the voter helplines are for ANYONE who has been denied their right to vote.)
1-866-OUR-VOTE is a project of The Election Protection Program. They are "a nonpartisan coalition of civil rights and civic organizations committed to protecting the right of all citizens to cast a ballot on Election Day."
1-866-MYVOTE1 "is a toll-free telecommunications system that allows voters who are experiencing difficulty in the voting process to record (in English or Spanish) a brief statement of their problem, and transfer, at no cost, to their local county/municipal board of election. Voters can also call the Voter Alert Line to find their polling location. The Voter Alert Line is up and running, and thousands of calls have already been processed."
MyPollingPlace.com will help you find out your precinct, and where your polling place is. For many precincts, they also have information about what kind of voting equipment you will be using, and how to use it.
If you need a ride to the polls: Call pretty much any candidate's office. Most of them will have volunteers on election day just for this purpose. You can also call organizations such as MoveOn.org (I will be offering some of my time election day to drive).
If you can: Let friends, family and neighbors know that you will be happy to give them a ride to the polls if they need one. If you live in an apartment building or condo, put up a sign near the mailboxes (most people stop by there every day) letting people know you will provide rides to the polls and give them some way to contact you. (Please DO NOT limit the ride offer to just people you agree with! Voting is about everyone getting a chance to have their say, whether you agree with them or not. Preferably, don't even ask who they're voting for.)
Know the Candidates:
Remember that it's not just the "big" ones. Many people will also be voting for local, county, and state judges; commissioners; school board; etc. These elections can have a major impact on your city, so remember to find out about those candidates, too, so you can make an educated choice in those races, too.
Project Vote Smart came about when "40 national leaders, including former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, formed Project Vote Smart (PVS) in 1992. Dedicated to upholding the ideal of democracy and serving the American people with unbiased and accurate information, PVS constructed a user-friendly voter's self-defense system accessible through a website and a toll-free hotline (1-888-VOTE-SMART) over a 10-year period."
The League of Women Voters is also a reliable source for non-partisan information. They send out questionnaires to the candidates, and print their responses. The national organization doesn't have information about local races, but your state's LWV group will most likely have a spot where you can put in your address and get a list of all the candidates that will be appearing on your ballot. (Their state sites usually use the domain name convention lwv(your 2-letter state abbreviation).org, ex: lwvmn.org or lwvny.org)
The League of Women Voters DNet (Democracy Net) project and Congress.org have joined together to offer candidate information. You can look up your address and find out what candidates will be on the ballot for the national races, see photos, get links to their website and email address, and read the candidates positions (from the LWV questionnaires).
Compare|Decide|Vote compares the positions of Bush and Kerry on 20 issues important to those ages 18-30.
Know Your Rights:
Election Protection 2004's Voters Bill of Rights, available in bilingual versions for many states.
For the most part, if you have not yet registered to vote, you are out of luck this year. EXCEPTIONS: Six states have same-day registration. These states are: Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE AT YOUR POLLING PLACE:
The MoveOn PAC has created a pdf document of four cards you can print out. The cards contain the phone numbers of national voter helplines: 1-866-MYVOTE1 and 1-866-OUR-VOTE. They also have numbers for DNC election helplines in the 16 states that have, in some way, shape, or form, already been having some problems with voting rights issues. (Okay, that last part may may be partisan, but the voter helplines are for ANYONE who has been denied their right to vote.)
1-866-OUR-VOTE is a project of The Election Protection Program. They are "a nonpartisan coalition of civil rights and civic organizations committed to protecting the right of all citizens to cast a ballot on Election Day."
1-866-MYVOTE1 "is a toll-free telecommunications system that allows voters who are experiencing difficulty in the voting process to record (in English or Spanish) a brief statement of their problem, and transfer, at no cost, to their local county/municipal board of election. Voters can also call the Voter Alert Line to find their polling location. The Voter Alert Line is up and running, and thousands of calls have already been processed."
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-31 11:13 pm (UTC)"Ground War"
Date: 2004-11-01 01:25 am (UTC)"Ground war" maybe yes in a semi-devious way, because historically, the greater the percentage of the eligible population voting, the more likely it is that Democrats will win. So by encouraging all voters, I suppose I'm encouraging greater numbers, and thus hopefully a Dem win. ;)
"Ground war" more no, because that phrase (in the election sense) usually refers to the efforts of the major parties to get more of THEIR voters out than the other guy does, without encouraging too many of the other guy's voters.
With this post, I tried to be non-partisan (and was hopefully successful!), and just tell EVERYONE, R or D, to get their butts out and vote on Tuesday.