HAVA OYSFORSHN!! Is YOUR vote safe??

For those of you who know Yiddish, I'm hoping the title of this post means "Come! Let us investigate!!" So, who do I think I am? Connie Francis??

HAVA doesn't only mean "Come!", as in the beloved Yiddish melody "Hava nagilah"--"Come, let us celebrate!"--Connie Francis's best-selling all-Yiddish recording of ALL TIME.

It also is the acronym for the 2002 law called "Helping America Vote Act." Please click the link and check it out for yourself.

As Robert F. Kennedy and Mike Papantonio's "Ring of Fire" radio broadcast is quoted as saying in Monday's Truthout, HAVA

was originally suggested by Democrats and Republicans but it was passed by a Republican congress with a Republican senate and a Republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for Democrats to register, for Democrats to vote, and then for Democrats to have their vote counted.

Now is the time to find out how YOUR OWN VOTE stands in your state. Yes, YOUR VOTE. One of the things HAVA has spawned in some states is a program called "Perfect Match." With Perfect Match, states can look at all the program addresses listed for you--social security records, motor vehicle records, voter registration--and see if they match...perfectly. Kennedy says,

if I registered as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and yet my motor vehicle license said Robert Frances Kennedy Jr. I'd be removed from the rolls. If your initial is different, if you leave an initial out, if you leave a "Jr." out, if you leave a hyphen out in your name.

This speaks to me very personally. My parents named me Mary Ellen, and sometimes I put the whole shebang down as my first name, and sometimes, if the form actually asks for a middle name, I put just Mary.

This is not my parents' day, when nobody considered things like this when they named their kids.

This is 2008, and the Republicans are working overtime to cleanse the records of all those nasty Democrats so they can foist their candidates on us once again. We've got a little more than a month to make sure every vote counts, especially our own.


If there IS a discrepancy that would purge you from the voting rolls, HAVA allows you to vote provisionally beforehand, but you have to get cracking on this.

MAKE SURE YOUR OWN VOTE WILL BE GOOD. I'm gonna check mine today.