Of all the actions that we engage in to reclaim our government, voting has the most potential for change. Consider the fact that only about 30-40% of the country voted in the 2000 election and that it only took 50% to elect (ahem) G.W. into office, that means that Bush was put into office by only 15-20% of the people in this country.
To me, this makes the prospect of getting Bush out of office in 2004 seem much less daunting of a task, no matter how many polls CNN and MSNBC release touting the president's popularity. As a matter of fact, the more of media boot-licking, the better, since if most Bush supporters are resting on their laurels, confident that public opinion is with them and that their mediocre leader is a shoe-in, the less likely they are to take an active role in his re-election.
Meanwhile, aside from educating my friends and family about the Iraq situation, I have been making a big push to get everyone of them to commit to voting in 2004. In the coming months, I'm going to start gathering all the information I can on the where's and when's of voter registration for everyone I know, and as those deadlines approach, keeping on their backs about getting it done.
If anyone has links to resources regarding the actual voting registration and results numbers of the 2000 election, please share them w/me as I am very interested in researching this further.
Thanks, Brian Douglas
On Monday, March 24, 2003, at 10:16 AM, Paula Kampf wrote:
As our many "moving forward" plans continue to evolve, I wonder if we should consider offering the opportunity for people to register to vote to people who are showing up for peace vigils, rallies, etc, are registered to vote.
It seems an easy assumption to believe that people who care enough to
show up at a rally would also care enough to register and vote, but there
may well be people present who have NOT found themselves invested until
now. This might be an opportune time to get them "on board" and help
widen their vision of involvement in peaceful movements as a long-term
goal beyond the events of these weeks.
Additionally, I doubt that it could hurt to be a visible REMINDER to everyone who IS registered that we WILL have the opportunity to "change the regime" here each time we head to the polls (Floridians, perhaps, excluded :).)
Peace, Paula
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