My Vote, My Right Working to Ensure Votes Count in Key States

by James Parks, Oct 20, 2008

This election, a record number of U.S. voters—many of them newly registered young people, seniors, poor people and people of color—will elect a new president, members of Congress and scores of local and state officials.

To help ensure that every vote is counted, the My Vote, My Right program, which is led by the AFL-CIO, is educating citizens about their voting rights and helping to prevent violations of those rights. Members of AFL-CIO unions and labor groups are participating in the program in a coalition of civil rights organizations, faith groups, local lawyers and other community allies in nine key states.

The voter protection coalition plans to address voting rights issues in 27 communities in the nine states—Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker:

It’s time to turn around America, and we will start by protecting our right to vote and making sure that every single vote is counted. A truly historic election day is going to come down to individual voters who should do everything we can to protect our own right to vote—and those of our friends and neighbors.

The AFL-CIO and its affiliate unions are distributing more than 600,000 “Voter Bill of Rights” fliers, including more than 100,000 each in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri. In Detroit, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union and the United Steelworkers are distributing bookmarks with voting rights information to bus riders. Meanwhile, AFGE is operating two web pages on popular social networking sites—MySpace and Facebook—providing students with “student voting tips,” links to resources such as the state board of elections websites, and information for students in the major swing states.

AFL-CIO voter protection activists also are referring voters to the toll-free voting rights hotline operated by the election protection coalition, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, to report problems. In addition, My Vote, My Right has recruited and trained hundreds of union members and retirees to work as poll workers in the nine states..

Also, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has launched the Election Protection Wiki at http://www.EPWiki.org, which enables citizens, journalists and government officials to report on and  monitor the electoral process in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

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