Obama activists to target young, minorities, homeless in Ohio’s disputed early voting

September 28, 2008 Dan Ezell 2008 Race 1 Comment

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) _ Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign blitzed bars and advocates for the homeless have lined up vans to ferry potential voters from shelters.

The prize could be thousands of traditionally elusive voters in hard-fought Ohio who would have the chance to register and vote on the same day — if the courts don’t intervene.

One-stop voting, scheduled for Tuesday through Oct. 6, would be especially convenient for those Democratic-leaning voters who have traditionally had trouble getting to the polls. It’s a reality not lost on two parties locked in a tight race four years after President Bush’s 118,000-vote victory in Ohio gave him a second term.

“The populations that we focus on, the lower income and minority populations, move more often,” said Teresa James, an attorney working in northeast Ohio for Project Vote, which pushes for greater voting participation. “They’re also more likely to have jobs that aren’t flexible in terms of voting.”

Ohio is one of more than 30 states that allow voters to cast an early ballot. Eight states allow voters to register and vote on Election Day, Nov. 4, while North Carolina allows the practice during early voting.

Turnout has been 10 percent to 17 percent higher than the national average in the six states that had same-day registration and voting before 2006, as well as in North Dakota (which doesn’t have voter registration), according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Ohio’s early voting period has sparked several lawsuits, including one by two GOP-backed voters who say the six-day period in which voters can register and vote on the same day is illegal. That lawsuit is before the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court, which is expected to rule Monday.

Republican John McCain’s campaign didn’t directly address whether it had plans to take advantage of the early voting window.

“We have a comprehensive grassroots program designed to turn out McCain-Palin supporters once early voting begins,” said spokesman Paul Lindsay.

Obama’s campaign plans to send staffers to Ohio State University, with about 53,000 students, to encourage early voting among the sometimes hard-to-engage young. Polls show Obama easily carrying the demographic against McCain.

Obama’s campaign plans to arrange concerts with John Legend, who will hold early voting rallies on Monday in Columbus, Springfield, Dayton and Cincinnati. For campuses far from election boards, Obama aides are organizing car pools to make sure students get to the polls.

On Saturday, Obama’s campaign targeted the 100,000-strong college football crowd at Ohio Stadium with a flyover advertising early voting and visits from staffers to surrounding bars.

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless believes it can round up 2,000 people from homeless shelters in the Cleveland area and get them to polling places. A donated van will shuttle voters from two shelters, including the city’s largest downtown. Seventeen other shelters are providing their own transportation.

Project Vote will go door to door in minority neighborhoods and use vans to transport people to election sites in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo.

Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill in 2005 that enabled all registered voters to vote absentee without providing a reason, beginning Tuesday. The deadline for registering isn’t until Oct. 6, so Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner ruled there is a six-day window in which voters can register and vote at the same time.

The GOP maintains that a person must be registered for 30 days to get an absentee ballot. They said Brunner has read a partisan interpretation into law that would give election officials no opportunity to check the validity of voters’ registrations.

Amid the legal wrangling, preparations for the window continue.

The progressive Rock the Vote will have a bus tour through Columbus, Dayton, Wilberforce, Athens, Cleveland and Bowling Green — all metro areas or college towns — to emphasize the convenience of the calendar overlap.

Cleveland City Councilwoman Stephanie Howse said activists and Obama volunteers are spreading the word in her ward.

“It’s just one piece of our much larger approach to early voting to turn out as many people as possible to get those votes in the bank,” Obama spokesman Isaac Baker said.

By STEPHEN MAJORS
AP Writer Joe Milicia in Cleveland contributed to this report

We the People are not above it all

September 28, 2008 Gamecock 2008 Race, Democrats, Faith, McCain, Obama 2 Comments

 

 

“…I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history…” – President Ronald Reagan

I was recently reminded of my favorite quote from The Gipper’s 1983 “Evil Empire” speech by a letter to the editor penned by Sherry Lyle of Athens, Alabama. President Reagan was urging Americans to cut through the “peace” rhetoric of left-wing appeasers whose “nuclear freeze” would have locked in the Soviet Union’s military superiority in Europe; recognize the evil of the USSR that then enslaved half the globe; and, support his proposal to place intermediate range nuclear missiles in Western Europe.

Reagan continued:

 

While America’s military strength is important, let me add here that I’ve always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

 

Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own religious conversation made him a witness to one of the terrible traumas of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which the West is indifferent to God, the degree to which it collaborates in communism’s attempt to make man stand alone without God.

 

And then he said, for Marxism-Leninism is actually the second-oldest faith, first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, “Ye shall be as gods.”

 

The Western world can answer this challenge, he wrote, “but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as communism’s faith in Man.”

Lyle echoes much of Reagan’s sentiment in a different time today:

 

Dear Editor:

 

After being bombarded with political campaigning, I’ve noticed that some of us might be feeling somewhat lethargic about the upcoming election. I keep hearing two general phrases; “I’m not voting because there’s not a decent candidate.” or “I guess I’ll vote for the lesser of the evils.” To the first, what happened to “judge not, lest ye be judged”? To the second, I did not see Adolph Hitler or Idi Amin on any of my ballots.

 

Most of us are guilty of judging others’ morals and ethics. It seems to bring us some kind of security that we are lacking within ourselves. As for me, my worst personal decisions and actions have been due to a lack of moral fiber; my own, not those who have tried to guide or lead me.

 

However, no matter what values drive you in life, I feel it is our moral responsibility to vote.

 

Leadership begins at home. Let us not forget the ones that have gone before us, with unrelenting courage, and those that fight still to secure this sacred right. Let’s not become indifferent. We need to be examples for our children and the ones that follow.

 

We have the luxury of living in the greatest country on earth. No man or woman can change our character, or lack of. Besides, we usually carry the best reminder around with us, in a pocket or purse, “In God We Trust.” I believe, if we put no man or woman before Him, we will remain a strong nation, no matter who thinks they’re running it! People have agendas, God reveals the way.

 

God bless America!

While I have always loathed scoffers, I have never been an opponent of general voter apathy. The right to vote is also the right not to vote, and much of the apathy is due to how great conditions have been in this country for most people for most all of my lifetime, despite, or in spite of, the party in power.

But, beginning with the assassination of JFK and then the McGoverite takeover of the Democratic Party, the nation lost its general agreement that politics end at the water’s edge and its general consensus on Judeo-Christian values at the national party level. I found I had to finally leave my former party and join the GOP in 2000 due to this fact and that I should have left the Dem Party 20 years earlier.

But Lyle’s message is quite different from any general attack against voter apathy. On the contrary, Lyle reflects Reagan’s call to admit the differences between the choices, and how vital it is for our nation’s continued prosperity for us to act on the fact of the stark differences. Sherry is not a political person or a journalist. She is one of the millions of patriots the beltway elites are ignorant of. She is America at its best.

John McCain is a flawed candidate. He is no Reagan, and to most conservatives, he is not even as good a choice as twice-elected, President George W. Bush. McCain has enraged conservatives with many of his policy positions and Sunday Show attacks on Republicans over the past decade.

But while there is a gap between McCain and other conservatives, there is a deep chasm between McCain and Barack Obama.

John McCain embodies the kind of patriotism that our nation, and especially our youth, desperately needs at this time. McCain showed his core when he went outside the Beltway box and chose Reaganite conservative Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

Hugh Hewitt recently wrote of an “Army of Sarahs” to describe the phenomenon of women flocking to the GOP ticket after her RNC speech, especially those women that have not previously described themselves as conservatives or republicans.

But I would point to Alabama’s Sherry Lyle and Alaska’s Palin to describe another fact: The majority in this country, of men and women, is still God-fearing center-right Reagan conservatives. There voices have been squelched in recent years given the spinelessness of many inside the beltway that get cowed by the liberal media and due to the fact that President Bush is no leader of a conservative movement and has chosen a “new tone” that refuses to call out the left for its sins in stark terms.

Many non-Alabamians and non-Alaskans confuse the postal acronyms for the respective states. (Which is AL again?) But one thing we don’t confuse are the echoes of Ronald Reagan in their respective voices.

Thank you, Ms. Lyle for reminding us of who we are; from whence we came; and, our duty on Election Day.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

Legal Editor for The Minority and HinzSight Reports

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” - The Chief Justice

Race 4 2008

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson