Before You Vote, Get Ready

by James Parks, Oct 24, 2008

With less than two weeks before the most important election of our lifetime, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is urging every working family to make sure they vote and are not thrown off by Republican efforts to suppress the vote.

In his Out Front column on the AFL-CIO website, Sweeney highlights a checklist from our My Vote, My Right project on how to prepare to vote. The checklist includes voting early,  taking ID to the polls and who to contact to call for help or problems. Most important, the checklist urges voters to not get discouraged or annoyed with what may be record lines at the polls and stay in line until you vote.  

Sweeney says each vote is critical, especially with widespread attempts by Republicans to suppress votes. He says:

The Republicans are treating the high volume of new voter registrations as a threat rather than the triumph of democracy it is. And each day we hear disgusting new smear and fear tactics coming from the McCain-Palin campaign. Don’t let anyone or anything turn you or the people you care about away. Your vote is your voice. It’s your right.

Click here to read the entire Sweeney column.  

In a separate statement, Sweeney also says the AFL-CIO union movement strongly condemns the coordinated national effort by the Republican Party and its allies to suppress voter turnout and deny ballots to newly registered voters, particularly young people, the poor and people of color.   

The Republican Party, Sweeney says, hopes to discourage new voters and divert attention from the issues that are motivating so many—the disastrous economic policies of the past eight years.  He adds: 

What we are seeing now is just the first wave of voter suppression and it will grow to include false information distributed in communities where Republican support is weak, intimidation and challenges of voters at the polls, lawsuits seeking to throw out voting results and a longer term escalation of the campaign for more voter suppression laws.   

To ensure that every vote is counted, the AFL-CIO has joined with other groups, including the NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law and the League of Women Voters, for our largest voter protection program ever. Some 1,400 lawyers have joined the AFL-CIO network of labor lawyers to travel into battleground states at their own expense to staff legal command centers and support the thousands of poll monitors who will assist people who have problems voting.   

In nine states, the AFL-CIO is educating voters about their rights, working with election officials about election administration and recruiting and training volunteer poll monitors and workers. 

We are referring voters to the toll-free voting rights hotline operated by the Election Protection coalition, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, to check their registration and report problems. The AFL-CIO also is airing radio ads in targeted communities giving voters tips on how to protect their vote. 

Finally, Sweeney calls on the McCain-Palin campaign to do more to stop the suppression of votes, as  well as stopping hateful smears and disinformation. 

And we urge the media to join the effort to make this a free and fair election by increasing careful reporting and editorial comment on voter suppression.

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