Vote Absentee

Just a reminder that everyone reading this need to submit your request for an absentee ballot Today! It needs to be in the hands of the County Election Board by Wednesday. Also get everyone you know to do the same. Remember that every vote cast for Obama by mail this year is potentially two votes for him; the one you send in and the one someone else will get a chance to cast on Tuesday because you shortened the line by one more person.

My instructions for the process are here. Please email the link to everyone you know.

Electoral College Update

I know I just did this back on Monday, but we are getting down to the wire here, and things actually are changing.

There has been a lot of the talk in the media about "tightening", and it is showing up in most of the electoral college counting polls. However, everyone still has Obama past the number of votes needed to win. To give you a sense of the direction and speed of things, I'll use the common shorthand of putting Monday's numbers in parentheses. Remember that a presidential win requires 270 electoral votes.

Pollster shows some tighening with Obama at 306(315) electoral vote to 157(157) for McCain. Rasmussen also shows it slightly tightened to 286(305) to 174(174). CNN is unchanged (perhaps unupdated) at 277(277) to 174(174). The statistical site FiveThirtyEight on the other hand has Obama's lead growing to 354.4(343.9) to 183.6(194.1). Note that these electoral counts tend to follow behind poll trends by several days. FiveThirtyEight mostly doesn't have that problem, as he reanalyzes polling numbers every day as they come in. That's probably the reason his is going a different direction, although it could also be due to the fact that he doesn't leave any state out as a "tossup".

Absentee

Yesterday the Tulsa County election board sent out a plea for absentee voters. They are expecting turnout so heavy this year that voting may actually be a serious hardship for many people. Given that, I'd like to request that everyone reading this blog register and vote absentee this year.

Just yesterday I requested an absentee ballot myself. Here's what you do:

Get an absentee ballot request form.

The easiest way is to download it from the state's website, but forms are also available at your county election board (555 N Denver for Tulsa County). Our headquarters at 3930 East 31 Street should also have the forms.

For most people, the form you need is this one. Click the link and print it out now.

If you are "physically incapacitated", or are the caregiver for someone who is, they request you use this form instead.

Get Your Registration Info

To help in this process, I suggest you go to the state's polling place locator website to find your registration information. Fill out the blanks, hit the "Search" button, and you should be presented with your registered name and your voter ID.

If the search does not turn up your registration information, move on to the next step without it and try to do the rest as best you can. However, after you have sent in your request, I highly suggest you call your local election board and verify your registration.

Fill Out the Form

You will need to fill in the following information:

• Your Name as it appears on your registration


• Your Address as it appears on your registration


• The name of the School District or Board of Education district in which you live. Sadly, this information is probably not on your registration record, so you just have to know this. For the Tulsa area it's probably something like "Tulsa", or "Jenks", or "Union", etc.


• The town or "Ward" you live in.


• Mark a box and fill in a date for which election(s) you want ballots for.

  To make things simple, I just marked the last box next to "all elections for which I am eligible during calendar year", and filled in the blank to read "2008". This will probably be the only remaining election this year. If you'd like to do this again for future elections, I'd suggest submitting another form to do so later.
  

• Fill in the address you would like your ballot mailed to. This can be different than your registered address.


• Sign it

That's it!

Send it In

Once it is all filled out properly, you need to send the application to your county's board of election office. For Tulsa County that would be by mail (or walk-in) to 55 N Denver, Tulsa 74103-1014. You can also fax the completed for in to their fax number, which for Tulsa County is 596-4536. That is the way I did it yesterday.

Deadline

You must have all of this done and the request must be in their hands at the county office no later than next Wednesday, the 29th.

I cannot stress enough how important doing this is. Just you alone doing this will not only will it make it easier for you to vote (+1 vote for Obama there), but it will also possibly allow one more person who walks in on election day to vote, rather than having to leave in frustration. The people who are going to have the toughest time with the lines are going to be the working poor, the infirm, and those with small children and no secondary caregivers. All of those groups are largely democratic. So every person who votes absentee is potentially 2 votes for Obama that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Plea from the Election Board

I was just forwarded this from Greg:

Employees at the election board implored me to get the word out to as many as possible that everyone should try to vote absentee. Even in early voting they are expecting very long lines and wait times. They noted that the elderly and disabled will not be able to stand in line for an hour or more.

Voting Info pt. 2

Yesterday I gave out some information to help prepare you to vote. So now that you presumably know what you are going to to, the next question is when.

The obvious answer is election day, Tuesday November 4th. On that day you can show up at your polling place any time between 7AM and 7PM.

However, we expect turnout for this election to be huge. Even in the last election, I ended up in a large line that took me half an hour to get through in the morning. This year, I'd say budget an hour, and be prepared to excuse yourself from anything else you might miss if it takes longer. If you try to show up at 5:30 after you get off of work, I wouldn't expect to be out of there before 7.

Don't let this deter you though! I don't care what else you think you are doing that day, you won't do anything more important. If you are worried about your job, don't. By Oklahoma law your employer must give you time off to vote. In fact, under some circumstances it must be paid time off. If you absolutely can't stand this happening on Tuesday though, there are other options.

Absentee Voting
If you don't want worry about waiting all that time, you do have other options. The first is to vote absentee. To do this, print out this form, fill it in, get it notarized, then get it to your county election board. You'll need to write down the address of your polling place, which again can be found here. I'd suggest hand-carrying it there rather than mailing it, as they have to receive it by the 29th of October. If want to mail it in, do so soon! That's only a week from today. You will need it notarized, and your county board is likely to have a notary there or nearby. Any nearby lawyer's office, real-estate agent's office, or car dealer will have a notary too.

Early Voting

Your second option is to vote early. To do this simply show up at the county election board office of the county in which you are registered to vote. For Tulsa County this is 555 N Denver in downtown Tulsa. For other counties you can find the address of your office here. If you live in one of those counties (eg: Osage) for which only a P.O. box is listed, you will need to call the office during business hours to find out the address to show up for early voting. The times and dates of early voting are:

• Friday, October 31, 8 AM - 6 PM


• Saturday, November 1, 8 AM - 1 PM


• Monday, November 3, 8 AM - 6 PM

This is the option we at the campaign are suggesting everyone take, if the travel distance isn't too much of a hardship on you. I know that some folks in northwest Tulsa actually dwell in Osage county, the seat of which is more than an hour's drive away (and through some territory which has not historically been overly friendly to those of us blessed with an abundance of melanin). Even then, if you can't easily squeeze in a 2 hour wait at the polls on Tuesday, a 2 hour round trip on Saturday may be just the thing for you.

Late Voting

There is no such thing as late voting! This is something Repubs like to spread around poor communities before elections to try to trick people into missing the deadline on Tuesday. If you hear or see someone talking about this, you are being lied to.

This is probably the most important election any of us will ever see. Make sure you are a part of it, whatever it takes.

Voting Info

With less than two weeks left until the election, I'd like to go over some voting information with everyone.

First off, to verify that you are registered to vote (and that you know where to show up to vote), you should visit the state election board's Polling Place Locator. You will need to enter your last name, birthdate, and zipcode, and it will show your voter ID number. Click on that to see the address of your polling place, and what voting districts you are in. I highly suggest everyone do this! Polling places change from time to time. Also, make note of your precinct number from this page. You'll need it for the next step.

Next, I suggest you take a look at your ballot now. This will allow you to figure out now, while you aren't under time pressures and surrounded by impatient people, what you need to mark where. Also, there may be some people or things on there you don't know about yet. Better to find out now while you can still educate yourself.

To do this, visit the website for your county election board. In Tulsa county you would go to http://www.tulsacounty.org/Nov42008Ballot.asp. This page has a table mapping the last three digits of precinct numbers to actual pictures of your ballot. Scroll down the page and look for yours.

For each precinct there are two links; one for the ballot for the State and County general election, and one for the City of Tulsa ballot. When you go, I believe they may actually be printed on opposite sides of the same ballot, so make sure to check the back side of your ballot!

The City of Tulsa ballot appears to only have a couple of propositions on it. please do take the time to educate yourself on them, but they are outside of the scope of this campaign. What we care about is the State and County general election ballot.

When you click on that ballot, what you should see is three columns of candidates. Next to each candidate you will see a horizontal arrow pointing to the left, with a big gap in the middle, like in the picture to the right. To select a candidate, you fill in the gap in the arrow next to his or her name.

What I would suggest is that you look for all the grey boxes on your ballot that contain headings. On mine they are labeled PRESIDENTIAL, STATE OFFICERS, CONGRESSIONAL OFFICERS, and LEGISLATIVE AND COUNTY OFFICERS. Under each of those headings will be a box labeled STRAIGHT PARTY VOTING. My suggestion is that you fill in the arrow next to DEMOCRATIC in each of these. You don't have to make any other selections on this side of this ballot if you do that. (In fact, I'd suggest you don't. It might confuse the machines).

The result should look something like what you see to the right.

If you vote straight party like this, you do not need to vote for individual candidates as well. Simply fill out those four headings, and you are done!

Now if you have philosophical problems with voting straight-party, I understand. I've often myself avoided that out of principle, even though everybody I voted for was a Democrat. However, this is the easy way to fill out your ballot and be done with it. Otherwise you will need to read the ballot carefully, and make a selection in every box *except* the straight-party voting boxes. There are lots of variants to the ballots so I can't give direction from here.

Tomorrow I'll try to go over early voting in Oklahoma.

Electoral College Update

With the final voter registration push and all the other news to cover, it's been more than three weeks since my last polling update.

In the popularity polls, Obama has since widened his lead considerably. Since I presented the Gallup graphic last time, I'll use the update here. For reference, our last check had him at the %49 mark on the chart.



Of course the electoral votes are what really matter. When last we checked, Obama was hovering just about 20 to 40 votes under the magic number of 270, while McCain was in the neighborhood of 200. Since then Obama's blown by the magic number of 270, and even past 300 by most reckonings. McCain has slipped down to 150 territory. Pollster has them at 315 to 157, with an additional 68 votes up for grabs in tossup states. Rasmussen has it at 305 to 174, and CNN 277 to 174. FiveThirtyEight (which sadly I didn't know about a month ago), using a statistical method to distribute the tossups, has it at 343.9 to 194.1.