How Important Is a Fair Election in November? How Important Is AlterNet to You?

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted June 9, 2008.

How important is a fair election in November? How important is AlterNet to You?

If you are like me, you are looking forward to the election in November to help change our country. I, personally, feel desperate for new approaches because there are so many things wrong with how we treat our people, and how we behave across the globe. I bet you do too.

But as we know, bad things can happen on Election Day. Remember Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004? The failures in our "democratic" system made me so furious. They made millions of us angry. And frankly we felt impotent, too.

AlterNet in Action

So AlterNet decided to do something about it. We assigned our crack reporter Steve Rosenfeld to closely cover the voting process in the presidential primaries. Steve has been in Nevada, South Carolina, California, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and more. He exposed many of the new shenanigans that the enemies of democracy employ.

Hundreds of thousands of voters and experts read Steve's reporting on AlterNet. Steve knows about election issues as well as anyone reporting in America today. His work is very important and must continue right through Election Day, with your help.

The dirty secret is that some candidates do better when fewer people vote, so their strategy is to make it as hard as possible ... so people get discouraged. We call that voter repression. We can't let that happen. We want everyone who is eligible to vote. This is America after all. Please work with us.

Indispensable Voter Handbook

We've taken what Steve has learned, along with the lessons of the nation's voter registration groups and turned it into an indispensable voter handbook. We are calling it "Count My Vote".

"Count My Vote" is for everyone who will be registering voters or working on campaigns, or who wants to vote and has questions. The book is jam-packed with everything people need to know about each state's voting rules, voter ID laws, new voting machines and what to do if you move, and it has special sections for students and seniors and much more. But most importantly, it helps the voter have confidence that they can handle any problems they face in voting.

Here is where we need your support the most. The handbook is less than a week from going to the printer. Will you help us print enough copies of the book to get it into the hands of people who need it the most? We are working with organizations that want to register 750,000 new voters between now and the fall. We want to give copies to the people registering all these new voters.

For every $40 we raise, we can get eight books into the field to empower voters and help protect them from what we know will inevitably happen. And if you give us $40 (or more of course!) we'll send you a copy for free. (The cover price for book stores will be $9.95) Click here if you will help us.

You, the Citizen Publisher

In publishing this AlterNet Handbook primarily with reader support, we are trying something brand-new. If you give us $10 or more, we will list you in the book as a citizen publisher. You can be anonymous, if you wish.

So far, reader support has been fabulous. More than 600 readers have become citizen publishers. But we need to reach 1,000 to get enough books distributed to make a dent. Can we count on you?

AlterNet asks you for support each season. This is our spring campaign, and we wanted to highlight this crucial issue of voting integrity and really test out citizen publishing.

Your financial support will help us get "Count My Vote" distributed widely. It supports our work in covering the elections. We pledge to relentlessly keep the spotlight on any attempts to twist the rules, and to spread the word, far and wide.

We are on the verge of success. We are pushing hard to make the printer deadline and get the books in to the field by the second week of July. The season for voter registration drives is the summer, continuing through September. With your help we will do that. And what the heck, become a citizen publisher. Have you ever done that before?

Click here to support AlterNet's Count My Vote

See more stories tagged with: count my vote, steven rosenfeld

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

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