My Vote, My Right Voter Protection Action Across the Nation
From the AFL-CIO Now Blog.
With so much at stake for working people in the November election, union members and activists are working through the AFL-CIO My Vote, My Right voter protection project to ensure the ballot process is run fairly and that every vote is counted.
(A new website up now offers help to voters who have questions about voting, including where to register. The National Campaign for Fair Elections launched www.866ourvote.org and spotlighted a toll-free voting rights hotline 1-866-OUR-VOTE, operated by a nonpartisan coalition of groups, including the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the AFL-CIO.)
Through broad local coalitions with union activists, lawyers, civil rights organizations, faith-based organizations and other community allies, My Vote, My Right participants are working with local election authorities to mitigate any problems that may be caused by this massive voter turnout and to clear up significant weaknesses in our election system that were spotlighted in the 2000, 2004 and 2006 elections.
In Colorado, My Vote, My Right activists met with county election officials to work on strategies to reduce the lines at the polls and convinced them to send out an absentee ballot application to every registered voter in the county.
In Michigan, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union and the United Steelworkers have joined to pass out bookmarks with a voters’ bill of rights to Detroit bus riders. In Kansas City, Mo., the local My Vote, My Right coordinator is recruiting high school seniors to monitor polling places near their school.
In Pennsylvania, our coordinators are pushing the secretary of state for a policy that would ensure each polling place has sufficient emergency paper ballots on hand Election Day and would require paper ballots if more than 50 percent of the voting machines break down.
As AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker says:
It’s time to turn around America, and we will start by voting and making sure that every single vote is counted. A truly historic election day is going to come down to individual voters who should do everything we can to protect our own right to vote—and those of our friends and neighbors.
Click here to learn more about the My Vote, My Right program.
Meanwhile, in the pivotal state of Ohio, the youth activist group Rock the Vote plans to hand out more than 10,000 of the AFL-CIO Student Voter Bill of Rights during a statewide voter registration drive, which began earlier this week.The Ohio student registration drive is critical, because across the country, younger voters are energized as never before behind the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama and Republicans are actively trying to suppress student voting. Democrats in three states say Republican election officials have sent false information to local college students about their voting rights.
The Republican county clerk in El Paso County, Colo., admitted sending incorrect information to out-of-state Colorado College students, telling them they could not register if their parents listed them as dependents on their tax returns. After Democrats complained, the clerk, Robert Balink, who was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, issued a statement saying his office had misinterpreted state law and “mistakenly published information that was incorrect.”
Balink’s actions are the latest of several instances in which local election officials, including some in Virginia and South Carolina, have discouraged college students from voting. The New York Times reported earlier this month that a local registrar at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg issued two releases that incorrectly suggested students who registered to vote might no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents’ tax returns.
Jon Greenbaum, a voting rights expert with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the McClatchy Newspapers that while voter residency requirements vary from state to state, they must meet the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. States and counties cannot adopt rules that treat one group of voters differently than others, he said.
Also in Ohio, according to McClatchy reporter Greg Gordon,Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner yesterday advised county election boards that home foreclosure lists should not be considered proof that voters have changed residences. “Ohioans faced with the pain and turmoil of a home foreclosure should not be targeted by the forces of disenfranchisement on Election Day,” Brunner said.
The Michigan Democratic Party and the Obama campaign have filed suit to stop the Republican Party from using lists of people whose homes are in foreclosure to challenge their right to vote. Macomb County Republican Chairman James Carabelli told the Michigan Messenger his army of election challengers “will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.”
In addition,The Seattle Times has this:
A Washington State court judge will hold a hearing Friday on a lawsuit by the state Democratic Party to force Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi to list his party preference on the November ballot as “Republican” instead of “GOP Party.” Rossi is running against Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire. He lost to Gregoire by 133 votes in the 2004 election, and polls show this race to be close as well. The Seattle Times reports that recent polls suggest that many people don’t know that GOP and Republican mean the same thing. One poll showed Rossi did better among voters if he used the “GOP” label instead of “Republican.”
