I realized a while ago that Dreamforce would be on Election Day. Somehow it took a while to register (no pun intended) that I needed to fill in an absentee ballot. But where to get one?
Thankfully, there is a website devoted to absentee ballots, http://www.longdistancevoter.org/. Please go to this site and do what is necessary to fulfill your civic duty.
If you want to vote early, which is slightly different, Reed College has a super website on early voting (updated regularly) with information on each state’s policies.
And if I may, I’ll get on my soapbox now: I was born in South Africa, a country where specific groups of people were not only denied the right to vote, but were denied the right to live in certain areas and pretty much every other right that we have in this country. I became a citizen at age 12 and promised my family that I would always do whatever it took to cast a vote in every election I could. Sadly, I broke my promise when I didn’t vote in the 2004 Presidential election. Yes, Kerry carried Illinois, so in retrospect my vote didn’t “matter,” but I still feel bad about it.
Of note, in Australia, not only is it one’s civic duty to vote, but all citizens are REQUIRED to vote. Yes, that’s right. If they don’t vote, they have penalties!
And this year, absentee ballots are predicted by some to be more important than ever.
So please do two things:
- Vote. If you’ll be at Dreamforce, vote absentee. Even if you live in San Francisco, if you don’t want to miss a minute of Dreamforce, you can still vote absentee. You can send in your application pretty much anytime in the month of October, and ballots are due, in general, on Election Day.
- Join me at one of the Ballots and Beer (my label, not theirs) parties Tuesday night in San Francisco. I’m planning to find the one with the most non-profit customers and consultants, as I bet we’ll all be cheering for the same candidate.
See you at Dreamforce, as none of us will see each other at the polls.
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