Virginia Fever: Easy To Catch

After reading this article by Roanoke columnist Dwayne Yancey summarizing the battlegrounds within the battleground state of Virginia, I called a campaign office in Purcellville -- roughly 35 minutes south of Washington, DC by car. The campaign worker there said that their precincts are mostly red. Tomorrow they begin their get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations, after doing persuasion canvassing and phonebanking, so if you got a car and are in the DC area, head on over to Purcellville or another VA Obama office listed here. The DNC is also carpooling-out volunteers to canvass key locales in the state. Call the DNC for times/locations on where to meet in DC for the final mass push.

There are opportunities to help our country no matter where you are.

An important job this year is doing election protection in the Richmond area, where African American voter turnout is expected in record numbers. Given all the concern over long lines (up to three hours long!) and machine malfunction (there was a number of cases in the primary), we could be in for another long presidential Tuesday, with all eyes on Virginia. The state is expected to see historic voter turnout but election officials only provided the bare minimum requirement of machines and other provisions. Thank you, NAACP, for suing those molasses.

Why can't we just have an independently verified and uniform voting system and get the day off to vote to avoid anymore Ohios, or to, as Rachel Maddow puts it, ban the poll tax once and for all? Stop the long lines!

I will leave you now with a quote from my adopted homestate of New York, which I hope and can safely say will never be a battleground and will always stay blue (please, God). New York Governor David Paterson speaking at the Democratic Convention in Denver: "If John McCain is the answer, then the question must be ridiculous." (This sums up McCain on SNL).