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getting out the vote
Feb. 5th, 2008 08:43 pmWith 11 messages* on my voice mail between Thursday** and Sunday***, various supporters of various politicians exhorted me to vote for their candidate. They reminded me the election was Tuesday. They urged me to go to the polls. Not a single one of them mentioned that I had the option of an absentee ballot. None.
*5 from the Clinton campaign, including 1 recorded message with Hillary Clinton's voice, 3 messages from the Obama campaign, and 3 from a candidate in a local election (the only one I've seen or heard anything at all from in this election.)
** Thursday was when my employer started exerting very heavy pressure on me to finish an impossibly big job by Wednesday morning. You could come in over the weekend? (Well, no. I'm going to be traveling.) And I'm taking the day off Friday. I couldn't even stay late Monday, because I had a 6:30 PT appointment. I didn't want to be the kind of worker who would leave early every day I showed up at all, when I was assigned this monstrous project, then show up at last with it unfinished. And I didn't want to be the kind of citizen who would not vote at all in this kind of close primary...even if the best candidates are out of the race already.
*** Monday morning was the deadline to request an absentee ballot. I had no idea. I thought a voter needed to request an absentee ballot weeks before the election, maybe more than a month. That's how it used to be. I first heard about the new flexibility Monday afternoon, in a radio report about how many people had applied for absentee ballots. Lots of news articles Monday evening and Tuesday morning (when it was too late) mentioned the "noon the day before the election" deadline to request absentee ballots.
*5 from the Clinton campaign, including 1 recorded message with Hillary Clinton's voice, 3 messages from the Obama campaign, and 3 from a candidate in a local election (the only one I've seen or heard anything at all from in this election.)
** Thursday was when my employer started exerting very heavy pressure on me to finish an impossibly big job by Wednesday morning. You could come in over the weekend? (Well, no. I'm going to be traveling.) And I'm taking the day off Friday. I couldn't even stay late Monday, because I had a 6:30 PT appointment. I didn't want to be the kind of worker who would leave early every day I showed up at all, when I was assigned this monstrous project, then show up at last with it unfinished. And I didn't want to be the kind of citizen who would not vote at all in this kind of close primary...even if the best candidates are out of the race already.
*** Monday morning was the deadline to request an absentee ballot. I had no idea. I thought a voter needed to request an absentee ballot weeks before the election, maybe more than a month. That's how it used to be. I first heard about the new flexibility Monday afternoon, in a radio report about how many people had applied for absentee ballots. Lots of news articles Monday evening and Tuesday morning (when it was too late) mentioned the "noon the day before the election" deadline to request absentee ballots.
