Voting

In conversation this past week with a friend who was a field organizer for the Obama campaign. She told me about a conference call that occurred between all of the Pennsylvania teams when one of the branches posted a sign in their office window that said "FELONS CAN VOTE." In Pennsylvania convicted Felons can vote for local, state and national office. After a huge amount of negative media press the branch was reprimanded by the "Obama for America" headquarters for putting up the sign. Sad but not surprising that the campaign wouldn't want an office to publicize this information to encourage people to register to vote (although I'm sure they were excited to get the votes) because of the stigma of jail time and incarceration. Made me think about the notion of the Obama campaign as an uninclusive movement and what kinds of movements I want to be part of. It is difficult to make things inclusive and celebratory of all but also so so worth it. Elana posted this article on the face book and now I have been really thinking about voting rights and who can vote. WHAT AN INSANE THING TO EXIST AS A STATE LAW especially in this time when *CYNICAL ALERT* voting barely means anything anyway.
Here is the article about felony voting in Washington State