Eugene weekly., September 13, 2012, Page 4, Image 4

letters
TO THE EDITOR
Voter Suppression
Millions could be surprised on Election Day
T
he question came just as I was loading the last bag into a car packed with
everything I would need between now and Nov. 6, Election Day.
“Which grater do I use to make coleslaw?” my husband, Bill, asked.
I knew that he really didn’t want me to get in the car. My grown children and
even the dog looked forlorn. Leaving Oregon in the fall to go help register voters
in Florida may be a fool’s errand, but frankly, I’m wondering why we all aren’t
heading east to do the same.
Through Idaho and Utah, I heard stories that will be mentioned in future
columns, but the picture of what voter suppression means became clear in
Carbondale, Colo., where I stopped to visit my friend Barbara Dills.
Barbara moved from Oregon to Colorado last year and has taken many
opportunities to become involved in the civic life of her new community.
Recently she went to the local Organizing for America offi ce — Obama’s fi eld
offi ce — for her fi rst volunteer stint to help register voters. What she learned
in what turned out to be an hour-long training would be enough to scare most
people away from participating, much less hitting the streets alone with a
clipboard loaded with legal paper-sized voter registration forms.
Republican Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler has implemented strict
new rules for community-based voter registration drives, typically organized
by the Democratic and Republican parties and the League of Women Voters,
among others. In Colorado, if an organization loses a form issued to them, that
organization can be fi ned $2,500 for each missing form.
As a former Oregon voter, familiar with the vote-by-mail system and used to
seeing piles of blank voter registration forms stacked in post offi ces and other
public places for easy access, Barbara was surprised that the form and the
process are so complicated in Colorado. She learned in her training that it isn’t
enough to ask someone if they are registered to vote here. The two questions the
Obama fi eld organizer instructed her trainees to ask are: 1) is the address on your
voter registration up-to-date?; and 2) did you vote in the 2010 mid-term election?
On her fi rst shift, Barbara learned why these two questions are so critical.
She asked a young woman if she had updated the address on her registration.
The woman answered that she had lived in the same house since 2006 and
started to walk away, but Barbara followed her and asked the second question.
“I don’t think I did vote in 2010,” she replied. “I really can’t remember.”
Barbara explained the hitch. If she didn’t vote in 2010, even if she previously
requested to permanently receive her ballots by mail, she won’t receive a ballot
in the mail for the Nov. 6 election this year. Secretary of State Gessler’s new rules
— purportedly designed to prevent voter fraud — include kicking all the by-mail
voters who didn’t vote in 2010 off of the active voter lists. They can still vote in
person at a polling station on election day, but the majority of them won’t know
that until it’s too late.
By the end of her fi rst shift, Barbara was shocked at how many people she
had talked to that had no idea what Gessler’s new rules might mean to them and
their ability to vote.
“Any sane person would assume that if they had checked that box for mail-in
ballots, there would be no issue,” says Barbara. “What makes it more confusing
is that these folks do receive mail-in ballots for local elections, like the one we
had recently here in Carbondale. The two lists are completely separate.”
None of the new requirements address voter fraud, which is illegal, but
only occurs when someone impersonates a registered voter and actually
attempts to vote. Most volunteers I know who’ve done voter registration have
watched pranksters register as Jack Daniels or Mickey Mouse and then walk
away laughing. Those are the forms that normally get thrown away, the forms
that could now cost an Obama fi eld offi ce $2,500 each.
Of course, Jack Daniels and Mickey Mouse never show up at the polls, but
the secretary of state isn’t so sure. He sent a letter to nearly 4,000 Coloradans
asking them to provide proof of citizenship or voluntarily remove their names
from the voter rolls. According to his offi ce, 86 percent of the letters went to
registered Democrats or Independents.
And while his focus has been on fi nding the
illegally registered voters, Gessler has until
recently left the registration of new voters to
volunteers. More than 3.5 million Coloradans are
registered to vote. As of Sept. 1, Gessler’s offi ce
lists 2.3 million as active voters and 1.1 million
as inactive.
There are 59 days left for volunteers
like Barbara to fi nd the 1.1 million who
don’t know their vote may not count.
Nancy Webber of Eugene is a longtime Oregon
political activist and author of Ground
Game to be published this fall, a book that
chronicles her life at high levels of the 2008
Obama campaign.
4
SEPTEMBER 13, 2012
EUGENE WEEKLY
TOO LATE FOR TALK
The lowest Arctic sea ice volume ever
recorded! Yet another confi rmation of
rapid human-caused global warming. But
climatologists are not cheering; they’re
not celebrating the vindication of their
theories. The results they predicted are not
happening in a petri dish or a computer
model — they’re happening in irreversible
real time in the real world, the only
world. And they’re happening faster than
predicted.
Visualize this: almost all of Oregon, in-
cluding the Cascades, experiencing above-
freezing average winter temperatures. That
is the mid-range prediction for the year
2100 cited in the Atlas of Oregon, pub-
lished over 10 years ago.
The Register-Guard says it’s “time
for Obama, Romney to discuss climate
change.” Please, it’s way too late for that.
Obama has been fast-tracking tar sands
pipelines and Arctic oil drilling.
There may still be time for local com-
munities to slow down the pace of the cli-
mate crisis. Coos Bay wants to speed it up
by helping to export coal to Asia. Here in
Eugene, we can do the right thing by urg-
ing our city councilors to pass City Reso-
lution 5065 banning passage of coal trains
through Eugene. Phone, email, attend City
Council meetings. Neither Obama nor
Romney will take the climate crisis seri-
ously unless we take action locally.
Jere C. Rosemeyer
Eugene
BUTT-WIPE INDUSTRY
Lately, I’ve been seeing more trucks
with bumper stickers proudly reading “If
You Don’t Like Logging Then Wipe Your
Ass With Plastic.”
Thank you, proud loggers, for now it
all makes sense to me. Now I can sleep at
night knowing that it truly is necessary to
clearcut forests, degrade the entire food
chain, contaminate and compromise the
watershed, and render thousands of species
of plants, animals and insects endangered
— so that our fat asses can be supplied
with butt-wipe!
The fi rst man-made plastic was invented
and presented in London in the mid-1800s.
The fi rst documented use of toilet paper
was by the people of medieval China.
Americans did not really embrace TP
until the mid-1800s, and in the early 20th
century it was becoming more common for
average households to use TP.
So, I guess it’s time now to harvest the
soft lamb’s ear leaves in my backyard.
Natives used mosses, leaves, wool, ferns,
hemp, seaweed, shells, etc. I would go up
the hill in my neighborhood and collect
such things; however, that hill has been
logged and more than likely has been
contaminated with 2,4-D herbicide by the
proud logging industry.
K.J. Hawn
Cottage Grove
PASSION FOR THE ANIMALS
Greenhill Humane Society has been
coming under fi re quite harshly lately. I
am not writing here to cast judgment upon
anyone here, quite the opposite; I wish
to praise and thank all in our community
who take on the responsibility of caring for
our domesticated wild friends who cannot
speak up for themselves.
I totally respect the passion people
share when writing editorials. Thank you
for standing up for what you believe in
and for putting yourself out there! For full
disclosure, my wife is a local veterinarian.
Thus over the past 15 years I have had the
pleasure of meeting many caring folks from
veterinary hospitals and local nonprofi ts.
As with any issue in Eugene, there are as
many ideas/solutions for animal welfare
problems as there are people involved. I
consider myself blessed to know many of
these deeply caring and hard working folks.
I am asking that we all take a breath
and give thanks to all who are working on
behalf of our amazing, furry four-legged
friends. Let us set aside our differences and
be grateful for everyone’s contributions. It
saddens me to see so much time and energy
being spent on bickering when we could be
using that passion in a positive direction.
I will leave to others who work in the
veterinarian profession to address details of
appropriate animal care. All I will say is that
VOTE NOW! BESTOFEUGENE.COM