McCall uses forum to support voting

ALBANY TIMES UNION ^ | September 15, 2002

[NYer]

ALBANY -- The Democrat trying to unseat two-term Republican Gov. George Pataki urged Americans to get out and vote on Election Day.

"Sitting on the sidelines is not an option," New York state Comptroller H. Carl McCall said Saturday in his party's weekly radio address. "Democracy is not a spectator sport. Too much is at stake."

Such issues as public school education, economic development and prescription drug programs for senior citizens will be decided by public officials elected this November, McCall said.

"Too many people don't take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to choose their own leaders," McCall said. "With voter turnout levels consistently anemic over the last several decades, we must engage more Americans in the political process."

McCall won Tuesday's Democratic primary in New York state over former federal housing secretary Andrew Cuomo in an election in which less than 12 percent of eligible Democratic voters turned out. Turnout was dampened by Cuomo's decision a week before the primary to pull out of the race, though Cuomo's name remained on the ballot, and by the attention paid in New York to Wednesday's commemoration of the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

McCall praised Democratic programs to enroll new voters at community events and college campuses and said he was "very disappointed" that voting problems cropped up Tuesday again in Florida, where it took weeks to count the vote in the 2000 presidential election due to ballot irregularities.

"At a time when we're working furiously to energize as many people as possible to vote, it's outrageous that civic-minded Americans who want to vote face unfair barriers," McCall said.

Voting also would be an act of defiance against those who perpetrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, McCall said.

[NYer]

McCall praised Democratic programs to enroll new voters at community events and college campuses

A colleague of mine, who is taking post graduate classes, noted that oftentimes, the voter registration forms handed out to students on campus, already have the Democratic Party checked.

Didn't they hand out free cigarettes to panhandlers last year, in an effort to get them to vote?

[Jack Wilson]

Check this out:
http://www.derer.com/pleasedontvote.htm

[Salvation]

Didn't they hand out free cigarettes to panhandlers last year, in an effort to get them to vote?

Wisconsin?

[Salvation]

Sickening. I wonder where the money trail to pay for trash like that begins??????

[NYer]

If you need to be told to vote, then you shouldn't be voting.

if during the last presidential election, you weren't sure about your candidate until he kissed his wife at the convention, please don't vote!

Actually, I find myself agreeing with him! Sadly, these are precisely the folks dragged into the voting booth by the dems who volunteer to pull the levers for them.

They DON'T know the issues!
They vote for the candidates they are told to vote for.
They go into the booth and follow the "sample" ballot supplied by the person who dragged them in.
They vote for those who handed them the free cigarettes!

I had to wait until I was 21 to vote. That was during the Vietnam war. In the meantime, our brothers, cousins and uncles were being drafted into a "police conflict" without any say in their elected officials. This guy makes a good point.

If you are over 21, but have been attending college, please wait 4 years before voting. it will take that long before the harmful effects of college begin to wear off.

[maxwellp]

I don't understand Americans who don't vote. They have been given the great privilege of governing their own country and they choose not to do so. Stupid people. And they will eventually make great slaves. But there are many great American folks who will carry the banner and these dum dums will be saved, although I don't think they are worth it. Many of them are kids who never learned the history of their great country thanks to government education.