{"id":256,"date":"2008-10-30T22:22:26","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T05:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=256"},"modified":"2008-10-30T22:22:26","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T05:22:26","slug":"protection-the-election-by-leveraging-office-printers-my-vote-my-right-ya-es-hora-the-voter-protection-wiki-and-more-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2008\/10\/30\/protection-the-election-by-leveraging-office-printers-my-vote-my-right-ya-es-hora-the-voter-protection-wiki-and-more-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting the election by “leveraging” office printers"},"content":{"rendered":"

cross-posted on Pam’s House Blend<\/a>, OpenLeft<\/a>, and <\/em>MyDD<\/a> and <\/em>Oxdown Gazette<\/a>, with various differences due to HTML incompatibilities but some cool polls to make up for it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"voterExecutive Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Print out election protection documents on Friday and Saturday, at work (unless you’d get fired) and at home (if you have a fast printer): My Vote, My Right<\/strong> state-by-state voter bill of rights fliers<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0 Election Protection<\/a> and Ya es hora<\/a> more detailed state-by-state legal information, and\/or some of the other information linked to in this post.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t be greedy and hog the printer.\u00c2\u00a0 Let your colleagues protect their votes too.<\/li>\n
  2. Give them away and discuss with friends, family, fellow canvassers and phonebankers, and at places of worship over the weekend …<\/li>\n
  3. Print out some more on Monday<\/li>\n
  4. Take them to the polls<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Details:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    A recommendation that showed up in several different ways in the Voter Suppression Wiki’s Workshop on Last-minute strategies<\/a> to reduce voter suppression is that people should print stuff out, post it in community hubs, and take it with them to the polls.\u00c2\u00a0 There is a lot of great information out there; it doesn’t do people any good if the can’t see it and can’t get to it when you need it.<\/p>\n

    \"\"A good example of this is the AFL-CIO’s excellent My Vote, My Right<\/strong> state-by-state voter bill of rights fliers<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 These have a small number of vital pieces of information: Voter ID and change of residence rules; restrictions on clothing, buttons, and caps; a buffer zone or “electioneering perimeter”; and the 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) hotline number.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s well-suited for posting on a bulletin board, or for carrying with you.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re English-language only (at least as far as I know) and only available for half the states, but that includes most of the battleground states where tensions are highest.<\/p>\n

    For Spanish-speakers, Ya Es Hora<\/strong>‘s Encuentre su Estado<\/a> on veyvota.org<\/em> is the place to go, with a clickable map taking you to information for your state.\u00c2\u00a0 [The Election Protection Coalition<\/strong>‘s state-by-state information<\/a> on 866ourvote.org<\/em> has similar information in English, with a lot more details than the My Vote, My Right<\/strong> fliers (and covering all 50 states).]<\/p>\n

    \"\"Great, English and Spanish, in all 50 states, we’re done, right?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Well no.\u00c2\u00a0 There are a lot of voters who are native speakers of other languages or have special issues: students, ex-felons, voters with disabilities, and so on. There’s a lot of excellent information out there, such as US Election Assistance voter guides in \u00e4\u00b8\u00ad\u00e6\u2013\u2021 (Chinese)<\/a>, \u00e6\u2014\u00a5\u00e6\u0153\u00ac\u00e8\u00aa\u017e (Japanese)<\/a>, \u00ed\u2022\u0153\u00ea\u00b5\u00ad\u00ec\u2013\u00b4 (Korean)<\/a>, Tagalog<\/a> , Ti\u00e1\u00ba\u00bfng Vi\u00e1\u00bb\u2021t (Vietnamese)<\/a>, the Brennan Center’s state-by-state student voting rights<\/a>, the National Disability Rights Network’s<\/strong> Election-day information for voters with disabilities<\/a>, and a wealth of information from the ACLU<\/a> for many states including sheets on felon disenfranchisment, “voter empowerment cards”, and a few specialized offerings like Wisconsin voting rights in Hmong.<\/p>\n

    I’m certainly not suggesting everybody should print everything out … use some sense here.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, if you happen to live in Wisconsin and know some Hmong-speakers, you might want to make sure they’ve got a copy of the information handy — and if they don’t have access to printers, print it out for them.\u00c2\u00a0 And the same goes for people in any other group that’s a likely target of voter suppression.<\/p>\n

    [There are still quite a few things missing from this list.\u00c2\u00a0 Is there any information targeted specifically at seniors?\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t find anything from a quick search of the AARP’s site.\u00c2\u00a0 What about Native Americans?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Arabic speakers?\u00c2\u00a0 Transgendered people?\u00c2\u00a0 And so on … if anybody knows good additinal resources, please leave them in a comment.]<\/p>\n

    \"\"All this information comes from well-known and relatively large organizations.\u00c2\u00a0 One obvious reason for this: it takes a lot of time, money, and legal expertise to create and check this kind of information, and then present it effectively.\u00c2\u00a0 Just as important is the question of trust: why should voters rely on this information?\u00c2\u00a0 Even if you don’t like the AFL-CIO, you’re likely to believe that they’re trying to give good information to their members here — labor is spending eighty-skazillion dollars on this election, so they’re not going to cut corners on stuff like this.\u00c2\u00a0 Similarly, when you see names like the National Alliance of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) and their partners<\/a> for Ya es hora<\/strong>, or the Lawyer’s Committee on Civil Rights, the Women’s Donor Network, and their<\/em> partners<\/a> in the Election Protection<\/strong> Coalition, it inspires confidence.<\/p>\n

    One thing that’s missing from all this information is a handy overview pointing people to it.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re online, this post is probably as good a place to start as any; but imagine that you’re at your local synagogue on Saturday (or mosque on Friday, or church on Saturday) and somebody says something like “my neighbor’s in a wheelchair and doesn’t know what to do.”\u00c2\u00a0 Are you likely to remember the NDRN, let alone their URL?\u00c2\u00a0 Probably not.\u00c2\u00a0 So it’d be very useful one-page version of this information that’s optimized for printing — and this would also be a great resource for citizen journalists or anybody else who wants to be a resource to take to the polls on Tuesday.\u00c2\u00a0 There are enough people planning on documenting this election that it’s very likely that somebody will have a smartphone there, or at the very least be able to text or tweet the info to somebody they know who can look it up and get back with an answer.<\/p>\n

    \"\"So two more documents to add to the list: the Voter Suppression Wiki volunteer resource pages If you have voting problems<\/em>, and its companion More options for the tech-savvy<\/em>, both linked from our Printable resources<\/a> page.\u00c2\u00a0 If you have voting problems <\/em>covers how to report problems, and has printable links to a lot of additional information.\u00c2\u00a0 More options for the tech-savvy<\/em> lists some of the citizen journalism\u00c2\u00a0 various initiatives like Video the Vote, Wired’s web-based reporting system, My Fair Election, and so on; and has a half-page of instructions for the Twitter Vote Report<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Kudos to cyberroth who did a great job of designing these initial versions under time pressure and dealing with rapid changes from a lot of directions!\u00c2\u00a0 These are still early drafts, and so there’s room for improvement; still, they’re a lot better than nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 Please have a look, and give feedback — and maybe print them out.<\/p>\n

    And once you have printed out copies of a few of these documents, please share them with friends.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve got an understanding boss and a fast office printer, consider printing out a stack of the My Vote My Right<\/strong> sheets and sharing them over the weekend; or post one on the bulletin board of your local hangout or church.\u00c2\u00a0 You get the idea.<\/p>\n

    Originally I was going to call this post “Building a better election by stealing office supplies”, in homage to Scott Adams’ Dilbert book, but that’s not really what we’re recommending.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’d get in trouble for printing stuff out at work, don’t; if your company’s having troubles financially, it’s not a good time to print out 10,000 copies.\u00c2\u00a0 Still I really think that most companies won’t mind it if their employees leverage their printer resources by print out a few copies … and of course there are plenty of people who have printers at home.\u00c2\u00a0 If enough people get involved it can really help get the word out this weekend — and at the polls.<\/p>\n

    So please, leverage away.\u00c2\u00a0 And then share over the weekend!<\/p>\n

    jon<\/p>\n

    PS: And speaking of weekend, this is Halloween weekend in San Francisco, and so I’m going to be offline for most of it.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll certainly be checking in from time to time, but please don’t be surprised if I lag on responding to comments here or messages on the wiki.\u00c2\u00a0 Please try to route around me by communicating directly with other members.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ll probably schedule an organizing phone call for Sunday evening, and a media phone call for Monday morning … details to follow.\u00c2\u00a0 Have a great weekend, and happy Halloween!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    cross-posted on Pam’s House Blend, OpenLeft, and MyDD and Oxdown Gazette, with various differences due to HTML incompatibilities but some cool polls to make up for it. Executive Summary: Print out election protection documents on Friday and Saturday, at work (unless you’d get fired) and at home (if you have a fast printer): My Vote, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,110,374,379,389,390,393,394,401,408],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activism","tag-dilbert","tag-tvr","tag-twitter-vote-report","tag-voter-suppression","tag-voter-suppression-wiki","tag-voting-rights","tag-vswiki","tag-wikis","tag-workshop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}