Women who have married and changed their last name since they registered to vote will be unable to vote in some states which require the name on the various pieces of ID to match. Is there a list of the voting requirements from each state? Perhaps it is not too late to save a few votes.

"It doesn't matter who votes; t matters only who counts the votes" __ Stalin

California is about 40% non-white, so Palast's observation that "40 percent of citizens who were purged from the voter rolls in California had Islamic, Vietnamese, Chinese and Hispanic names" does not indicate a gross inequity in voter disqualification, as he implies. (To be fair, this does not necessarily negate his other assertions.)

If there is an exit poll outside your voting place take part in it. The exit polls may have some meaning, as part of other efforts-this time.

I have worked with tens of thousands of Latin Americans, both in Mexico and Latin America, as well as in the states of Texas, California and Washington, as a U.S. government employee, state employee, and county employee. In innumerable cases, immigrants arriving in the U.S. have significant confusion -- not caused by them -- but caused by multiple national, state and local bureaucracies. It is very common that immigrants to the U.S. very quickly, within weeks or months of arrivale, have a U.S. immigration document, a social security card, and a driver's license or state ID card with different versions of their names. This can be further complicated by state welfare records and other records with further variations on their names. For those from Latin America, they may quickly have a version of their name where their paternal last name becomes their middle name or initial and their maternal last name becomes their last name. A good example of bureaucratic incompetence was the Social Security Administration's handling of my wife's SS card. In the end she had four cards with four different names -- one because the SSA processor insisted in violation of law that my wife should carry my last name which is not her legal name and the last two because apparently the employee was semi-literate and misspelled her name (twice). In the end, we could not even get the Social Security Administration to take the three wrong cards back, with everyone from local to region administrators stating that they were not sensitive documents and telling us to just throw them away. This name confusion, which is often the result of bureaucratic bungling and not any error on the part of individuals, should not be reason for disenfranchisement.

I have strongly suspected that this has been happening for a long, long time-unbeknown to the voters, of course!

This election is vital to the survival of our democracy. Therefore I plan to vote early and often.

Come on. Is it really going to matter who we vote for? They are one in the same. Two choices? Get real. And both "parties"(guess why the call them 'parties') are bought and paid for by big business and Israel.

Ideas for Solutions are what we need, now. While it is sure that action must be taken to preserve our democratic election system, the big question of "How?" remains yet to be answered. For that matter, we need to figure out, “How,” to right, preserve and make sustainable our fundamental constitutional republic! More than likely, any effective and long lasting action will require the participation of an informed and active citizenry; or "the masses". Currently, there are many broad and active progressive efforts afoot involving scores of us in the blog-o-shpere, but we are still not effectively mobilizing the critical masses of so many potential 'boots already on the ground'. A great many of our citizens are angry and disaffected, having felt the pains of recession for an already extended period. These are the people with the most to gain and are probably primed for action. We need a strategy to reach these people in the streets; the people who are not already tuned into our channels in the online world, the people who are not accurately informed, the people who have not been motivated and organized into mobility. The key to effective action is to get enlightening video and blog information (like the content in Truthout, Alternet, Bill Moyers Journal and Democracy Now, Greg Palast and Kennedy pieces etc.) that reveals the truth about what is going on, into the faces of the masses. The only way American citizens will be motivated into action is if the masses; 1) become thoroughly offended by the realization of how they are being screwed, 2) realize that they have options do something to stop the screwing, 3) are guided toward coordinated leadership they can have faith in following within the security of numbers, and 4) can look forward to achieving some goals which they can tangibly perceive in their daily lives. Over the last several years, I’ve attempted, using whatever sources I have had available at the time, to create a strategic solution to address this issue of motivating the masses. My basic strategy is to use physical iconography, repetitively visible in the real world to guide people to a resource in the online world where they can quickly be linked to news, op ed, documentary, video and other media information regarding various topics of public importance as well as organizations and groups (local and national) organizing action surrounding those topics. In short, my idea is to create a physical visual interface to guide people towards relevant information to consider and act on. I’ve created a set of icons representing various issues and framed them in the iconography of the US flag. The initiative is called, MyAmericaToo.com, to remind people that this is their country too and that they have to accept responsibility and take action if they want it to be a place where they can live humanely and peacefully. I have produced tens of thousands of 30 ‘varieties’ of stickers and given these out and sold them online; everywhere I take them people get turned on by the idea and snap them up. I’ve invested quite a bit of my personal financial resources into the project and my partner ran away scared that he would be put on some terrorist watch list if he was associated with the project. None the less, I soldier on and can accept the losses especially if this initiative can eventually create a platform of unity or inspire a common template for the masses to coalesce around. If anybody else out there believes that this strategy can work, I’m offering to do whatever I can to share this strategy and spread it far and wide. Please feel free to use the format I developed, any of the icons, your own icons, my url, your own url so that we can have “something common” to unify around. I’ll send you the graphics files I have, even refer you to my manufacturer, anything as long as this strategy has a chance to catalyze a great American awakening. Unfortunately, my ex-partner was the ‘web guru’ of our team and he set up the system for creating new links to news, video and groups, in a very inefficient way. Since I’m only one person and I need to do other things to survive, there are very few links with up to the minute information, but what is there is good and still valid. Any programmers who can offer some insight to creating a more efficient system for updating content or any other aspects of the initiative, please feel free to contact me via the myamericatoo.com website. I’ll send anyone free stickers if you can pick up the postage. Be informed, be active, be well

I LIVE IN TEXAS THE HOME OF THE MONSTER VOTING MACHINES THEY ARE INADEQUIT HOW DO U WRITE A CANDIDATE IN? THEY ARE GOING THRU THE ROLLS HERE IN AUSTIN WITH A COMB IF YOUR ADDRESS OR PH NUMBER IS CHANGED AND YOU DONT HAVE THE RECENT INFO ON YOU VOTERS CARD YOU ARE DELETED FROM THE ROLLS AND THAT IS JUST ONE OF MANY TRICKS THEY ARE UP TO CHRIS RYAN

Oh yeak... I forgot to ask whether "Come on..." was being ironic. I assume so for otherwise...geez... I can only imagine where he's coming from...can't be.

Isn't it ironic that we send people to third world countries all over the planet to make sure their elections are legitimate.

It seems crazy to me that although states administer their own voting programs, they seem to be falling in line around purchasing the electronic voting machines instead of going with verifiable paper ballots. Are there any states who have said "no" to electronic balloting in favor of paper balloting? And if not, why not?

There is a fundamental problem and conflict of interest when each secretary of state, the official in charge of elections in their state, is an elected official and member of a political party. In 2000 and 2004 and now in 2008 we have individuals who are both the acting secretary of state and the heads of the state's Republican Party's campaign in support of the presidential candidate. We operate like an African country or Russia whereby the party that counts the votes for some reason always wins. Go figure! We need to take the voting process away from states control.

To SlidingHomeInOregon: In the precinct in which I vote, for Snohomish County, WA, voting is done by the same method in-precinct as with absentee ballots: complete the arrow with black ink pointing to the candidate of your choice. Ballots are then tabulated via scanning equipment. So, with regard to a mailed ballot being dumped, what's to stop ballots filled out at the polling place from being dumped, all other factors being equal? Additionally, as far as I have been informed, Washington State operates its elections on a primarily mail-in ballot basis. Polling places are thus fewer because of this policy. If a large number of voters decided not to use their mail-in ballots, there would definitely be line problems at the scattered polling places available, at least in Western Washington. Granted, this is the situation for a single state, but I think the overarching paranoia Palast promotes regarding mail-in ballots is a little overblown, depending on in which state one is voting.

In Oregon, we have been voting by mail in all elections for years now. The ballots are mailed out about 2 weeks before voting day. After filling them out by filling in an oval with black or dark blue ink by the chosen candidate or yes/no answer, the voter encloses the vote in a privacy envelope and signs the outside of the envelope which is then inserted into the mailing envelope. It is a simple inexpensive system which creates a paper trail and the ballots are kept for a while in case there is a recount requested in which case the party or group paying for it pays the cost of the second scan of the ballots. That can be for one county or several or for the whole state. So far it has been reported that o.7% of the ballots filled in and scanned had some sort of problem. I like the system. Simple, inexpensive, and repeatable should the need arise. Too bad more states don't give it a whirl.