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PA League of Young Voters own Dylan Lampe was interviewed by WTAE while he waited in line to vote on Chatham’s campus.
Meanwhile, volunteer Francine Porter was out interviewing voters about their voting experience and thoughts on the election.
Videos like these are being uploaded by the League as well as many other groups and individuals all across the county as part of the Video Your Vote project.
Tags: election day, election protection, stories, videoyourvote, voters
No cell phones, no cameras, a new ban in Westmoreland and Allegheny counties is keeping all cameras out because they will “distract” first-time voters.
This will make election protection efforts, like VideoYourVote, a lot more difficult.
Terry Griffin, Western PA Field Organizer, and Liz Rincon, Executive State Director for the PA League spoke on the drawbacks of this ban…see the news story here
The PA League and the PAVoice Election Protection coalition will still be participating in VideoYourVote, by going to polls to ask voters about their voting experiences. And don’t forget to call 866-OUR-VOTE if you see a problem at the polls to report it right away!
Tags: 2008, allegheny, camera ban, election coverage, election protection, pbs, poll problems, presidential election, videoyourvote, voter rights, westmoreland
1,150 people pledged to vote, for whatever reason was most important to them.
Today, we mailed all of those voter pledges back to the voters, so they will have a reminder arrive in their hands just days before election day.
Simone and Liz are having a pledge-card-stamping party and wish you were here.
This would not have happened were it not for the incredible pressure we all put on the BoE within the last week. Jamming the phones on Thursday must have left an impression, forcing the Board to take action.
Even so, there’s still much more to be done. For starters, the process needs to be far more open and transparent than it was. In this day and age, there’s no reason to only talk about something after the fact, even if it takes place on a weekend — people will disseminate the relevant information virally via electronic communication. We could have known that the audit would take place when it did.
Also, the county needs to go through and check more than 18 out of the 4,700 machines — yes, that’s right, they checked fewer than 0.3% of the machines — that we will be voting on in just one week.
Why is this all so important? The software that our voting machines use was updated a few months ago, but we had no way of knowing that the updated software still complied with state and federal regulations. After a massive public outcry at a County Council meeting in September (see Success!), the Council passed a resolution calling on the Elections Board to audit the software. The Elections Division, in turn, started stonewalling, claiming that the process would take too long — requiring a three-month bidding process before the audit could even start — and that there was no state-established protocol for an audit.
If we can’t be confident that our voting machines will count our votes accurately, what’s the point in voting in the first place?
Pa League canvasser for the “Unlock the Vote” Project registers another happy NEW voter who got their registration in right before the deadline to be able to vote in this fall election.
Saturday October 4th was a great day for the PA League! We had so many wonderful volunteers wake up early to go canvassing with us and the Steelworkers in Penn Hills and North Versailles to make an impact on the upcoming election.
It was extra exciting because the PA League recently has been getting national recognition for our efforts. On Saturday, CNN brought their film crews out to North Versailles to capture the excitement and the hard work that we have all been doing to reach out to those new and unlikely voters.
You can catch the footage on CNN American Morning showing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week!
Engaging the next generation of young leaders!
Terry and I spent the morning with our friends Jerry, Andy, and Kelly from the United Steelworkers at the US Steel Clairton Works making sure that everyone there was registered to vote before the registration deadline Monday. Thanks to the USW for bringing us in.
You may be wondering, why, standing up for America, is Terry crouching in this photo? I suggest spending a little time out talking to voters with him, and you will see that he does things his own way. Not that he is any less effective for it: there are a few people who will be out at the polls November 4 who would not have been able to vote this year without Terry’s dedication this morning!
Mac
Tags: 2008, canvassing, election, new voters, Pennsylvania, registration, steelworkers, voter
We got a spot in the Post-Gazette for our jail registration work in conjunction with Just Harvest; Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN; the Community Voters Project; Work for Progress; and Duquesne University nursing and political science students last week!
Tags: allegheny county, Allegheny County Jail, disenfranchised, election, ex-offenders, inmates, pa league of young voters, pa league of young voters education fund, Pennsylvania, registration, unlock the vote, vote, voter, Voting“Spearheaded by inmate program director Jack Pishke, it was the largest registration effort to date at the jail and the only one jail officials knew of statewide, in anticipation of the last registration day: Oct. 6.
In a dizzying two hours, the group helped to complete 456 new registrations and about 700 absentee ballot applications.
Unlike most of the younger volunteers, Ms. Rabinowitz, 67, of Park Place, had been in jail before. She was locked up with a group of organizers for two separate stretches in 1963, after the group was arrested for registering rural black voters in the south with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Those voters, she said, were scared because “they’d never had the right to vote before and we couldn’t tell them it wasn’t dangerous.”
The jail inmates today were just eager. And hopeful.”
“I want government that works for the people.” - Andrew
“I finally can and we are going to make history this election.” -Kymarr
“Lower taxes and gas prices.” - Cameron
“I want a change and to fulfill my responsibility as a citizen.” - Sophia
“I want to have a voice in the political process.” - Walter
“I believe my vote can make a difference.” - Chelsea
“Because of the troops being killed in Iraq, because i think they can
start coming home.” - Amy
“I want America to be ran by someone whose gonna do whats right for the US, not himself.” - Amanda
Opinions expressed belong solely to the individuals mentioned and are not necessarily those of the PA League.
Tags: CCAC, election, pledge card, Schenley, Schuman, vote, voter, young