Forum Post: Voter Registration Forms - Liberate American democracy
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 19, 2011, 10:57 a.m. EST by aahpat
(1407)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Here is a link for voter registration forms for every state.
VoteSmart.org registration information for every state http://www.votesmart.org/elections/voter-registration
Download, make copies and pass them out at OWS rallies and actions.
Go to stores and malls on Black Friday and pass out voter registration forms. The malls will try to stop you. Wal-Mart will try to stop you.
Fight to liberate democracy in America!
Yes great thread, register to vote! This movement has energized a young base who are most likely not previous voters. This is important!
Absolutely!
The greatest threat that we can level against the Democrats and Republicans is to organize a political power INDEPENDENT of the two party system. They will quake in their Italian loafers if we start voter registration drives at all OWS rallies and activities.
Someone on another thread pointed out that the parties are discounting OWS because they see 18-25 year old Americans as not being involved in the electoral process. I want more than anything to prove them wrong.
*IMPORTANT*MAKE SURE YOU GET A PAPER BALLET, Hand written. When you vote. BC the electronic voting machines can be easily manipulated..... Paper ballet= Paper trail...it's traceable
*IMPORTANT*MAKE SURE YOU GET A PAPER BALLET, Hand written. When you vote. BC the electronic voting machines can be easily manipulated..... Paper ballet= Paper trail...it's traceable
*IMPORTANT*MAKE SURE YOU GET A PAPER BALLET, Hand written. When you vote. BC the electronic voting machines can be easily manipulated..... Paper ballet= Paper trail...it's trackable
As long as you "believe" that you have no power in the vote and that this process is useless to bring about change then you are partly buying into the corporate propaganda machine. Incumbency has given us complacency. Incumbency has given corporations the strength to run our government and direct policies while maintaining a minority stake at the voting booth. Think Tanks and Media sources shape our viewpoints. It's why corporations dump millions of dollars in financing think tanks and utilizes the media to direct its propaganda. The power in our system is the vote. The simple process of voting out every incumbent in Washington DC would have a devastating effect on the influence corporate america has enjoyed for decades.
Everybody needs to read what OneVoice has written here and to realize that a candidate who wins via being manually written in is entirely possible. If this is not true and you still believe your vote doesn't count then what have we come to? Please reread the US Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers compare them with the current corruption in our political system and then tell me if our nation isn't ripe for a New Constitutional Revolution!
I would love to see 100% of all those who can vote to take part in this process. It requires approximately 15-20 minutes of a person's time once a year. The OWS movement has matured into a structure that has corporate america worried. Our political leaders are leery about giving this movement any recognition for fear that it will continue to grow. They believe that we are the babies crying and as long as they don't pay attention to the OWS movement then the babies will stop crying. I know many OWS supporters don't believe in the process of the vote. Yet, I hope that all supporters take into consideration the make up of this movement as it grows. Many people want change but haven't given up their belief that our government structure is strong but that the tenants need to be kicked out because they are destroying the sheet rock and molding. Maybe change could come from a block vote against all incumbents. Or write in candidates. The Constitution gives the majority the right to control government and policies. Our politicians have forgotten the majority once too many times.
Thank you for your reply. Perhaps .PDF files of the Constitution, Bill of Rights and The Federalist papers, the Glass Steagall Act and a document explaining in plain language the stranglehold the privately owned Federal Reserve, Banks and the whole media and military complex has on US and the world is in order so that all who visit this site and www.occupytogether.org can self educate, become galvanized and act for the new/old Constitutional Revolution that is upon us for all who truly want to take back our FREEDOMS and OUR COUNTRY and BRING BUSINESS and JOBS back to AMERICA!
If voting made a difference it would be illegal--Emma Goldman
I don't think voters are so much apathetic as they are considerably more cognizant than are most so-called liberals that whomever you vote for, what you get is the same old bullshit. That, I think, is one of the primary factors motivating the growth of OWS.
if people don't get serious, it will be illegal soon. Give the99% an alternative to the republicrats and Voter apathy will all but dissappear.
NGA NOW all roads lead to Philadelphia https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/
I prefer to find candidate who will take the issues in the declaration to Congress next year and fight for them.
The convention for next July sounds like nothing more than the start of YET ANOTHER political party. But too late to have any impact on the 2012 elections.
Get real.
Get involved in the real elections.
Liberate our democracy from the Wall Street owned two party system.
Promote outside the box candidates for election to state houses and Congress.
We need real political action not more pie in the sky high minded declarations that have nothing to do with political reality as it exist today.
The reason a list of grievances is prepared is so the candidates are told and given the opportunity to act. The convention is to draft the List. You are jumping ahead, you are not being patient. Democracy is a pretty good machine, it is in need of some maintenance and operator re-training.
A nation is not easy to inform and educate without the billions that the Wall Streeters will throw at the two parties. We should be acting now to create a platform and finding people to support, not waiting until July. Most of the primaries are over by July. I want to be able to make a difference in the two party primaries as well as the general election. Many of the tea party candidates who won last year did so in the primaries. that is where activism can make a difference.
Your cynical disaffection guarantees the ineffectiveness of democracy.
You give the Wall Streeters their success in owning the democracy. Don't blame Wall Street if democracy does not work for you. Look in a mirror.
All candidates are vetted, pre-approved, and funded by the corporate financial complex. BO has proven that to all.
Bush never won an election. The first term was an appointment by the Supreme Court, which violated the process by denying a recount. The second term was an appointment by Diebold, the voting machine corporation that manipulated election results.
The candidates are vetted only because you allow it. You buy into the linear two party system. I don't.
I believe in asymmetric non-linear politics.
Use the existing system more creatively and without regard to the failure mantras programmed into you by the two parties and you can produce change without the billions of Wall Street duopoly dollars.
Mass adoption of Write-In supporting alternative candidates does not cost money and its easy to do.
But you believe the corrupt have won so they have. Thanks to you mindlessly parroting their defeatist blather.
Who is your write in candidate? How are you going to get a majority of the population to elect them? Do you have $1 billion to buy media coverage (they don't have to sell it to you)? Do you have an organized activist or political structure in 50 states? Do you have candidates for every congressional seat?
OWS is building a system - based on personal responsibility, personal autonomy, and true horizontal democracy - that will fundamentally change our system of government and make it representative of the people rather than the private financial interests.
FYI the two-party system is corporations and government on one side, citizens on the other.
Boy do you sound defeated. Before you have opened your mouth. You are totally programmed by the parties and Wall Street. Your attitude is their success.
I plan to Write-In Elizabeth Warren for president in the elections. Wall Street hates and fears her.
I will happily support Write-In candidates for any race that I can find people to support. Your "horizontal democracy" is nothing if you don't put real political actions behind it. Its nothing but empty words without intent.
We don't need all fifty states. We need enough candidates in enough states to show that we exist. Look how much power the Tea Party got from having just 29 out of 435 members of Congress.
There has never been a concerted effort to use Write-In. OWS has the people to do this for the first time ever in America. We can take our democracy back from the two parties and their Wall Street masters.
But not if the movement is defeated before it starts. If OWS listens to people like you with your linear thinking and party is master mindset we will go nowhere. Which is just what the Democrats, Republicans and Wall Street want from us.
I agree that we must take every possible action, including write-in candidates. But we must not assume that any single action is the only way to achieve our aims. This is not defeatist, it is realist.
I agree.
I never said otherwise. but I think there are more immediate and realistic opportunities that are being ignored for more esoteric and less achievable ideas. Americans need change now not in ten years. The elections are the most immediate way to achieve some change now. Even if we don't get major wins if we make a real presence of ourselves the politicians will remember that and start looking for ways to gain our support. that means moderating their corruption and adopting our goals for honest politics and economic justice.
We don't have to win to make a difference.
If the politicians don't hear it from us they won't hear it.
I'm afraid that elections will take too long, be maligned and coopted by the powerful forces that are aligned against us.
What good will eventually taking over government in 3 or 4 election cycles do if the Middle East is a smoldering pile of radioactive debris, millions more are without homes, jobs, food ... ?
I'd prefer to be optimistic but even the briefest look at the track record of the corporate-financial-congressional complex shows how close to doom we are and how little those in power care.
I hope that you are wrong. But I understand and somewhat share your pessimism.
Having been through a few election cycles where there are dire events that appear to be ready to overwhelm all reality only to recede in time for one reason or another I know that I have to slog one hoping for the best and expecting the worst.
Thus the need to advance on multiple simultaneous fronts.
Power to the people!
Any time I want to respond to a post, but it so stupid, and so fallacy ridden, that I'm too overwhelmed to tackle it, I assume the OP is a troll. Well done.
How do you like living down there in your cave?
Your denunciation is not rebuttal. It is the fetid effluent of a butt head.
You offer no solutions except to attack and denounce the solutions that others offer.
You are more the troll than I. I am trying to incite real and creative alternatives to the failed status quo. You offer nothing but mindless hate and defeatism that supports the continuation of the corrupt status quo. I am thinking outside the box while you cringe in the darkest corners of the box that the party system convinced you is your only alternative.
Liberate yourself from the status quo.
Be creative.
Try asymmetric democracy. It can work if you are brave enough to try.
Registering to vote, then voting out incumbents, and writing people who don't give a fuck about your opinion is:
A) "trying to incite real and creative alternatives"
B) "thinking outside the box"
C) "Liberate(ing) yourself from the status quo."
D) Obviously none of the above (you're quite a simpleton.)
If you're not a troll, you're very dumb, most of your posts are comprised of blatant straw-man arguments and repeated cliches about boxes and such. It's very Ironic.
Anything you say.
You are using a typical right-wing troll tactic of mischaracterizing my positions and then arguing your mischaracterizations rather than arguing my positions. I have nothing to say to you.
Owned.
The whole reason OWS took off was because a handful of anarchists put it together on the one hand and a somewhat larger handful of ordinary people fed up with the ineffectiveness of the electoral system joined in.
Probably, someday, our movement will decide to organize in the electoral arena, but it will start by putting tens of millions of people in the street. We are nowhere near that yet. At best we have only put a couple of hundred thousand in the streets in the US. We have a long way to go. We can't even establish the free speech rights of tents yet and that won't happen through legislation. It will happen from mass action. Right now the biggest danger to our movement is the real possibility of being captured by the Democratic Party which has been the grave yard of every mass movement since the Populists in the 1890s. For us to think about electoral action is at least premature.
This government and both political parties are owned lock, stock and barrel by the corporations. We live in a corporate state. Electoral action in that context is a sad farce.
Look at the slogan at the head of this website. It refers to a worldwide revolution. The first question for our movement is, is the notion of revolution serious or is it mere hyperbole? It's not about violence or nonviolence. It's about really fundamental social change, which is about a good deal more than changing the faces of those in office or a few pathetic pieces of legislation. You may not think they are pathetic, but that is the point. Is the call for revolution real or should it be abandoned?
You are using a lot of words that have specific purpose and value but you are not saying anything. "Revolution" is more than standing in the streets screaming at the walls of Wall Street. Revolution is action and intent. You talk revolution but you say nothing about action or intent. No purpose. No solutions. No goals only tactics.
Try climbing out of the little box that the two parties and Wall Street have convinced and brainwashed you into believing is your only option. It is not!
Liberate American democracy from Wall Street and their corrupt political parties..
Find people NOW who you want in Congress and the state houses of America. Mount a unilateral asymmetric Write-In campaign for your preferred representatives.
Support them online.
Support them in newspaper forums.
Support them with letters to the editor.
Use the free homepage space that many ISP's provide to make support webpages for the people you support.
Be creative.
Break out of the compartmentalized thinking that the Democrats, Republicans and Wall Street have convinced you is your only option.
Sounds like you take radical activism seriously. So do I. But it's possible to be very militant in the pursuit of relatively modest goals. From you post, I'm not sure what yours are, though i do think that the Declaration of the Occupation is at leas a proto-revolutionary document. The question still remains: Is the OWS call for world revolution genuine or mere hyperbole?
Hyperbole. Threatening rhetoric to try and regain some vestige of the power of the word.
I have goals. I want to see the mass movement of OWS focus in each state to try and get at least one person elected to congress in each state. That is not an impossible goal and it does not require the billions in duopoly dollars that the parties get from Wall Street.
I firmly believe that a concerted effort by one thousand like-minded people in each state can get most of the fifty people elected who would be the OWS caucus in Congress.
With all of their support from the GOP the tea party got 29 people elected in an off year election when very few people vote. And when thse who vote are more right-wing. And many of those elected were actually Republicans who adopted the tea party platform rather than tea party people who got elected on their tea party merits.
In a major election more Americans vote more liberally. The kind of people who a quietly sending the OWS what dollars they can send. Using the Internet, public forums and mass activism can generate a buzz to overwhelm the two party system. And do so without money and power.
We can do this. We just have to want to.
I would agree that probably the vast majority of OWS supporters see its call for world revolution as hyperbole, but if that is the case then they ought to work hard to have such slogans and icons such as clenched fists removed from the website and literature of OWS. That majority can't do that because, majority though they might be, they are far from coherent in what they want. The demands working group, for example(the most moderate tendency at OWS) can't even agree among itself on a set of demands.
The fact is the dominant intellectual tendency within OWS, even though they are a minority are the anarcho-syndicatlists who started it all.
There is purpose and place for every element within any changing moment. The clenched fist is not a symbol of anarchy. It is a symbol of power. that power can be local, national or international. And it can be all at once. I personally have always identified with the clenched fist as a symbol not just of raw power but unity of purpose among like-minded people.
Even the anarchists are an absolute necessity because their raw anger drives opponents to seek compromise for fear of an anarchistic fuse being lit that cant be quenched by political process.
Even the mass movements led by Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi understood that while their preached peaceful dissent the act of gathering large numbers carried an inherent threat that without compromise that large mass could quickly turn very ugly and out of control.
The importance of the anarchists in OWS has absolutely nothing to do with there anger. What it has to do with is their intellectual contribution which has been singular and which is largely not at all covered my the MSM I suspect because they are unable to think outside the box of Republican and Democratic Party politics, but the same can be said of the large number of reformers who have come to support OWS. They seem clueless about the role of the anarchists, much like the Popular Fronters in the 1930s were clearly clueless as to how they were being manipulated by the Stalinists. I'm not suggesting here that the anarchists who were the initiators of OWS are in any sense manipulative. Quite the contrary, I don't think they are in any way, though I do think that the vast majority of OWS supporters are pretty clueless with regards to the intellectual contribution that anarchism has made to the movement.
All that anarchists can contribute is the raw anarchy of anger. Anything else is coherence and coherence is not anarchy.
Proudhon was an anarchist. His intellectual contribution lives on despite any anger he may or may not have harbored. Likewise with Peter Kropotkin who was an anarcho-pacifist. Emma Goldman too was an anarchist who left as large a body of thought as did the socialist Eugene Debs. Henry David Thoreau was also an anarchist. The list is much longer than this and anarchist thought would fill a library. The fact remains that the initiators of OWS were profoundly influenced by anarchist thought and they remain the most articulate and coherent advocates for OWS. Just take a look at the Declaration of the Occupation, really the only "official" position that the OWS has managed to pass. It's extremely radical and there is a lot more to it than raw anger, though it's certainly not political, at least not in any meaningful electoral sense. It very specifically, for example, avoids making any demands.
You can say, by definition that any coherent set of thoughts about society is by definition not anarchism, but I personally know a lot of anarchists that would disagree with such a formulation.
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