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Local Progressive Voter Guides Share Like Crazy

Which is better, voter guides or sliced bread?
I say voter guides.
Please drop whatever you’re doing right now (you’re reading my article so technically you’re all mine for the next 60 seconds). We’re going to swing an election together. Somewhere in the country. Right now. Click on TheBallot.org. Find a local progressive voter guide for your town, and share it with everyone you know. Right now.
Go ahead. I’ll wait…
Ok… GOOD JOB! We just helped swing an election together, somewhere in the country.
This handy new tool TheBallot.org has aggregated more than 350 local progressive and non-partisan voter guides. Some were created by well-known progressive groups like Sierra Club and SEIU, but a lot of the best ones were created by individuals or small informal groups. It’s not too late to make your own.
Our short-term goal is to get tens of thousands of 2008 Obama voters to come out, cast informed votes this Tuesday, and get their friends to do the same.
The truth is that most of us have no freaking clue what is on our ballots — especially down ballot stuff (judges, county assessors, local ballot measures, etc). Honestly, it’s intimidating, even for me. But Local Voter guides don’t just help with down ballot. The act of creating, reading, and sharing local voter guides makes us knowledgeable, confident, and empowered to share the guides with our friends and talk to them about what’s on the ballot, and the importance of voting.
It’s amazing: As individuals armed with homemade voter guides, we can have the same impact as a powerful interest group or a newspaper editorial board — the power to influence and turn-out hundreds and thousands of new votes.
The reason why I’m so passionate about home-made local voter guides isn’t just about Tuesday’s election. It’s a 21st Century model of how we can build an empowered hyper-local progressive political movement from the ground up.
AND it’s about helping win and swing as many elections as possible on Tuesday — at all levels.
We are in for some real nail-biters, folks!
We can the margin of victory in squeaky close elections. We’ve seen it many times:
2000 Florida Presidential Race: 537 votes.
2004 Washington State Governor’s race: 127 Votes.
2008 Minnesota Senate Race: 312 votes.
As Karl Rove reminds us, the 2006 mid-term election — the sweeping Democratic victory, which gave Dems control of both Chambers of Congress– was decided by only 10,000 votes in the Senate (in two states) and less than 80,000 votes in the House (spread across 14 districts). Several House races were decided by less than 1000 votes.
There are at least 30 Million sporadic Democratic voters who voted for Obama in 2008 who will vote again in 2010 –but only if we ask them to. If just 10% more 2008 Obama voters would vote again, we would crush the Tea Party from coast to coast.
I bet you have at least 10 friends in your phone and Facebook right now who are totally down vote on Tuesday –but they need you to remind them.
Which brings us to the final reason voter guides are better than sliced bread. Voter guides are the perfect excuse to start conversations about voting without making anyone feel judged or put on the spot. You’re sharing an extremely helpful resource.
So stop biting your nails about this election. And start Facebooking and Tweeting like crazy: TheBallot.org

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com