Somebody else posted this and thought it worthy of a bump.
Polls and Media will tell its over. Don't believe them.
You are absolutely right- excuse the cut & paste, but I'm linking & posting as fast as I can until the election is settled- here are some recent thoughts:
backhoe to Just mythoughts
I have always enjoyed your hard work. Give your wife a hug from me... Sarah has awakened the best in US.
Thank you.
I've never seen anything like it-- I got my wife to change her voter registration so she could vote against Kerry in 2004-- but the lines were so long, she had to leave and get to work.
Still, that was a negative- she couldn't have cared less about Bush, she just despised Kerry so much...
Sarah?
Halfway in to her first speech with McCain ( the week before the formal introduction ) she stood up, and said
"I want to vote for that woman!"
And all the trash The Evil Party has tried to stick to Sarah?
That gets a big, fat, "So what? Everybody's been through that!"
I'd like to think that my wife is not unique, that there are a lot of women ( and men as well ) who see her as someone who has made something good out of her life, despite the stumbling blocks life throws in your way; someone that dumb Governor whose name I can't recall appointed to a rubber-stamp position, who turned out to be a stealth reformer...
We need more people like Sarah in positions of authority- not more of the same old tired retreads who helped get us in the messes we are in.
backhoe to Aussie Dasher
Neighbor, I thank you for your kindly thoughts towards your American cousins.
We- Mrs. B and I-- will vote come Hell or high water- we don't need an American version of Robert Mugabe' in this fair land.
Our plans to ferry nursing home residents came to naught- my truck is still in the shop, my wife has health problems and a tiny little sports car that can barely hold us, let alone passengers.
But we're going to vote, regardless of anything else.
And, just to honk my own horn?
I've told you all how my Democrat, apolitical wife of 24 years turned in to a SarahBot... meanwhile, Biden stumps in heated arenas and gets 400 supporters to show up... Sarah appears outdoors in the cold, and gets 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 people...
Everything I have- to boost Sarah, or slam The One ( Can you say "Abyss," class? ) or be of any possible influence on the election, is here-Sarah Palin- links, from the beginning:
Click the picture:
what is gotv?
go to vote?
got to vote?
is it a website?
In the end, the most important part of "GOTV" (Get Out The Vote) is voting oneself.
But speaking more generally, it is the critical activity in the last 48 hours of a campaign.
The Wikipedia has a surprisingly good article on GOTV at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_out_the_vote, which I will liberally quote here since it is subject to arbitrary change:
Campaign contexts
In contexts of the efforts of candidates, party activities and ballot measure campaigns, "get-out-the-vote" or "GOTV" is an adjective indicating having the effect of increasing the number of the campaign's supporters who will vote in the immediately approaching election. (As a noun, "get out the vote" or "GOTV" is shorthand for either "get-out-the-vote activities" or "the previously planned get-out-the-vote portion of our campaign".) Usually, GOTV is distinguishable from earlier activities necessary to carrying it out. That is, GOTV includes telephoning known supporters on the days leading up to an election (or on election day itself) or providing transport to and from polling stations for supporters, whereas canvassing and the the process of identifying supporters usually takes place earlier in a campaign. Other GOTV activities include literature drops early on election day or the evening before and an active tracking of eligible voters who have already voted. The importance of get out the vote efforts increases as the total percentage of the population voting decreases. For instance, with only two-thirds of the population voting in a Canadian election it is often far easier and more cost effective to ensure that a hundred supporters show up on polling day than it is to convince a hundred voters to switch support from one party to the other. This has also tended to polarize electoral politics. A 90% turnout from a party's radical base is often better than a 50 percent turnout from both radical and moderate supporters. GOTV can also be extremely important in high turn-out elections when they are extremely close.
Reading system
The traditional GOTV method used in the UK is the Reading system, developed by the Reading constituency Labour Party and its MP Ian Mikardo for the 1945 general election.[1] Once canvassing was performed to identify likely Labour voters, these were compiled onto 'Reading pads' or 'Mikardo sheets' featuring the names and addresses of supporters and pasted onto a large table or plank of wood. On election day these lists, with identical copies underneath, were torn off and given to GOTV campaigners. At each polling station, tellers for each party will collect the unique poll numbers of voters from their polling cards. These numbers are regularly collected from the polling stations and collated in a campaign headquarters, oftern referred to in the UK as committee rooms. 'Promised voters' who have already voted are then crossed off the list of voters canvassed as supporting Labour. This enables campaigners to then focus more efficiently on the remainder of their supporters who have not voted. Computerisation has heralded further increases in efficiency, but nearly all subsequent methodologies can be traced back in some form to the Reading system. Negative campaigning and voter suppression The terminology reflects a distinction of GOTV from the complementary strategy of suppressing turnout among likely opposition voters. Political consultants are reputed to privately advise some candidates to "go negative" (attack an opponent), without any intent to sway voters toward them: this plan is to instead increase the number of eligible voters who fail to vote, because their tendency to believe "politics is inherently corrupt" has so recently been reinforced. Such turnout suppression can be advantageous where any combination of three conditions apply:
- The negative campaigning is targeted (by direct mail, telephone "push polls," or the like) on likely opposing voters, reducing the collateral damage to supporters morale.
- The side going negative has an advantage in its supporters being steadier voters than those of its opponent.
- The side going negative has an advantage in doing effective GOTV, so that its campaign workers can get a GOTV "antidote" to more supporters "poisoned" by the negative campaign, than the opposing campaign can of their own supporters.
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It also works on a personal level: call those you know and make sure that everyone is ready and able to get to the polls.
I truly think we are going to win..
Get out and vote and vote once!!!