Dawn of the Season: Early Voting Begins

You might be one of the lucky people who gets to legally vote before Election Day on November 4.

Early voting began last week in Louisville, Kentucky, and around one-third of all American voters are expected by some experts to vote early.

Americans will be able to vote before Election Day in 34 states and the District of Columbia.

Georgia, Kentucky, and Virginia on Monday, September 22 kicked off the process of statewide early voting, and residents statewide can either walk to the polls or mail in ballots to rock the vote.

Many states, including Georgia, are operating their early voting procedures under new statutes that have increased the timeframe in which voters can cast their ballots before Election Day and have decreased the need for many voters to cast absentee ballots.

The Rocky Mountain region is home to two battleground states, Colorado and New Mexico, in which around half the electorate might vote before Election Day, says Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center.

Florida, another critical battleground state, may see up to 40 percent of residents vote early, Gronke says.

It’s never too early to do a good thing.

The Next Round of Disenfranchisement: Fight Back

See what these folks are doing?



They’re registering to vote at a Flobots concert we attended back in May.

They’re members of the 18-29 age demographic, a group electoral analysts have said will play a critical role in determining the outcome of the upcoming general election. Even though the youth vote made a big impact on the outcomes of the primaries earlier this year, new obstacles have arisen that might make it harder for some of America’s youth in certain areas of the country to vote in the general election.

On August 25, a county registrar in Virginia claimed that students attending school in the county risk their financial security if their home address is out-of-state and they register to vote in the county. He claimed students who registered to vote in the county under these circumstances could lose the ability to be declared as dependents on their parents’ tax returns, and said this could impact their finances while at college.

Talk about a turn-off to voting. It’s good for the students that the registrar was wrong. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said his statement was incorrect, and a 1979 Supreme Court decision affirmed students’ right to register to vote at their college address.

The county registrar, after questioning by civil rights lawyers, issued a clarification to the August 25 memo in this document and said it did not have a position on if any element of student’s finances would be affected by registering to vote outside their home county.

This is not the only recent story of potential disenfranchisement. Currently, there’s a political storm brewing in Michigan regarding the disenfranchisement of voters whose homes have been foreclosed, and we’ll keep you updated on the legal weather over there.

With the state registration deadlines for the general elections approaching, we must be even more critical of any and all apparent attempts by anyone to in any way disenfranchise voters without due and just cause. It is important for you make sure that you’re still registered to vote and that you have not been removed from registered voter lists. You too should have the chance to impact the course of the nation.

One of the best ways you can take direct action to make sure your voting rights are secure is utilizing our Rock Your Rights page. We’ve partnered with the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and other groups to protect and promote voting rights this year and beyond.

Fight for your right to vote on Election Day.

Virginians are Rockin’ the Voter Registration

Virginia’s Board of Elections ordered a whopping 200,000 additional voter registration forms after citizens throughout the state spoke out and rocked their right to vote .

The Board ordered the voter registration forms after a big increase in the number of registrants exceeded the Board’s expectations. This is what we like to call a “good problem,” because the problem – the shortage of ballots – came as the result of more people wanting to participate in the electoral process.

Virginia has recently seen a dramatic increase in voter registration among the 18-35 years of age group. In mid-August, 64 percent of the 200,000 voters who had registered since January were in this age cohort. After you whip out calculator and do some math, that’s about 128,000 new youth voters in Virginia alone. And that was back in August.

Some Virginians who have asked for registration forms want to fill out those forms to make sure they’re registered, to guarantee their ability to vote even if they registered before. Their proactive stance regarding November 4, their desire to make sure they’ll have the ability to help affect the future of America through the power of the ballot, is exemplary of true American patriotism.

Virginia’s voter registration deadline is October 6, and a complete list of voter registration deadlines for the 50 states and the District of Columbia can be found here.

Rock the Vote was in Blacksburg, VA today, causing part of the voter registration "problem." Check out photos here.