I can haz Absentee Ballot? No. Not Yours.

At a national level the McCain Campaign
and the RNC have been mailing out Absentee Voter Forms. On the surface
this is a non partisan act of good will to increase voter turn out. At
the simplest examination the logic is Old people like McCain Old people
vote Absentee lets help them out.

In actuality the mailings have the potential to disfranchise you and man
others. First look at the mailing you may have received. I bet it was
addressed to the Seaton Family or Current Resident. Mine was and so have
several others I have seen. The Seaton family is not some elderly
couple that used to live in your place its just a cover to throw you off
the intent of the mailing. The mailer includes an absentee ballot and a
envelope to return it to the registrar. This si step one in
disenfranchising a poor trusting student who received the mailing.

So you think great, I am from Richmond, I want to vote I just fill this
out and shove it in the mail and I am all set. But look closer at the
return envelope. The return address is that of the Montgomery County
Registrar in Christiansburg. If you send it there you wont get receive
an absentee ballot, the registrar you want to notify is your home
county's.

The second way this can get more Blacksburg residents disenfranchised is
by overwhelming the Montgomery county office. Local residents who have
moved, new permanent residents like me and those locals who really need
absentee ballots from the Montgomery Office may not get properly
registered in time because election officials are dealing with errant
absentee requests.

This mailing was mass mailed to Blacksburg addresses which are
overwhelmingly student addresses because of the demographics of our
college town. These ballots have the potential to trick you into
thinking you are all ready to vote absentee when you are not and swamp
the local registrar to the point where actual absentee voters and local
residents have trouble registering. The mailer looks innocent enough,
perhaps you though the campaign was trying to turn out those stalwart
Republicans the Seatons who are unable to leave their home. In fact
this mailer may have been designed to disenfranchise the students of
Virgina Tech and Blacksburg local residents by lulling them into
thinking they are properly registered to vote absentee when they are
not.

Check it out for yourself. Try searching for hard news articles on
McCain absentee ballot mailings. This is not just some conspiracy
cooked up in the minds of liberal bloggers. Its occurring all over the
place. In Ohio they leave off a check box that is required by state law.
In Wisconsin the return addresses are wrong. In Iowa its asks for the
wrong number off your drivers license.

Please check the Virginia State Board of Elections on how to identify
where and how to properly register. If you don't qualify as a Virginia
resident check you home states procedures to register.