ar_wahan | Yeah, I voted too. (Reply)

I was the 578th voter in my small town. We have an old-fashioned wooden ballot box. You put your paper ballot, completed by hand with a pencil, folded neatly so nothing shows, into a slot, and an elderly gentleman whose name I still don't know after all these years turns a big crank that grabs the ballot and pulls it inside the box, and the number changes like an odometer's. The ballot box probably dates from the early 1900s.

I trust it a lot more than the new-fangled voting machines.

I spent four hours Saturday in the home of a stranger with eight other people, making calls on behalf of MoveOn.org. I was calling the 9th district in Florida, urging people to vote for the Democratic candidate. I hate doing this kind of work -- I am much better at motivating people on paper than on the phone -- but I felt I had to.

Just now I got an email from MoveOn.org :

We're getting reliable reports of recorded messages sent by Republican groups to progressive voters in cities like Memphis, telling them they'll face prosecution if they try to vote.

It's outrageous. And we need to fight back, fast and hard, to turn the tide. The best way to do that is to make sure every Democrat and progressive knows to where, when, how and why to vote today.

Please make some calls right now to get progressive voters to the polls:

http://pol.moveon.org/nov06/eday/index.html?id=9460-234328-xiSsV8D54V_QqnlSsSORnw&t=2

In the last few days, the GOP has even been calling progressive voters at 2:00 in the morning—pretending to be calling from the Democratic campaign in a despicable gambit to suppress the vote.

Calls from machines meant to threaten and confuse can do great harm. But calls from real people meant to inform and empower can do great good.

We must not allow these desperate Republican tricks to rob voters of their voice. We have a few more hours to cut through the lies, remind these folks of their right to vote and give them the information they need to exercise it.

We have a few more hours to win. Right now we're making 30 calls per second, but we need to step it up even more. Please hit the phones!

(We were very specifically told not to make any calls after 9 p.m., FYI) I hope the people receiving these calls don't actually think they'll be prosecuted for voting. But then again, the days of lynchings aren't that far behind us -- if they even are. If you had to live through that era, today's threats might be sadly effective.

Damn, I hope MoveOn.org is wrong about those stories.... If not, we're in an even bigger handbasket than I'd thought.