How the last presidential election awoke me from an unsound sleep

[kpete]

How the last presidential election awoke me from an unsound sleep
by Jeanne Norris Weinberg
July 22, 2006

Or ... One average citizen's account of her unsettling experience video-taping on Election Day 2004, attending the public hearings afterward and then serving as an Official Witness for the Ohio Vote Recount.

In 2004, like most of my friends, I was asleep at the wheel, even with questions still lingering following the 2000 election. As an active mother, advocate and writer, I felt entitled to this lethargy. It's all too much was my hidden mantra. If I hadn't been asked to take my outdated family video camera to the polls on Election Day, I might still be able relieve myself of the burden of being awake and aware. But from that day forward, things changed. In late 2004, I added Voter's Rights activism to my list of duties. Nobody in my life saw it coming, least of all me.

Linda Byrket, a filmmaker and the organizer for video-documenting voter issues on the day of our last presidential election, had nabbed me three days before the election, while I was waiting in line for a showing of the film, Unprecedented, at the Drexel Theatre. She assured me that my ineptness with a video camera wouldn't get in the way of making a video record of voters and their stories.

I took film footage at precincts in Franklin County, Ohio, and it changed me, forever. Following that, I also attended two public hearings about election abnormalities and following that, I volunteered to become an official Witness for the Ohio Vote Recount.

much more at:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/2092