Friday, January 02, 2009

Exactly who is "us"?

I just got a polite phone call from a woman saying she represented "Nashville For All of Us" and she wanted to let me know that early voting had started on two Metro Charter Amendments and I could vote against them at the Election Commission Office. I reminded her that we could also for FOR them and that's when the conversation came to an end.

I checked on the phone number that showed up on my caller ID: "931-698-1533 Columbia, TN". Her "Nashville for All of US" support might mean more if she actually lived in Nashville. The number is also linked to the rowing club at Georgia's Berry College.

Please remember that the only place to vote early is at the Election Commission downtown. I don't know why the decision was made to not have early voting out in the county as usual. When I look at who lives and works downtown the cynic in me suspects it's intended to be inconvenient for all but the committed against voters.

Davidson County Election Commission
Metro Office Building (next to Howard Office Building)
800 2nd Avenue, South
Election Commission site for the actual amendments and hours of voting.

Along this same line MNPS BOE member Karen Johnson (District 6-Antioch) has posted to her blog that she is against the charter amendment making English the official language of Nashville.

2 comments:

N.S. Allen said...

Probably, the decision to have only one voting site was driven by the fact that voter turnout on the referenda will, by any reasonable expectation, be incredibly small. Early voting, as such, is likely to be borderline infinitesimal, meaning that having multiple sites open just wouldn't make sense. And the simplest place to set up a site is downtown.

So, the odds of it being a conspiracy to drive away early voters who live farther away from downtown are slim.

Either way, I'll have to head down tomorrow morning to vote. School will be back in session, by the time the election itself comes around.

Buckley said...

Interesting tactic, considering so much funding in support of the resolution is coming from Virginia. What's Tanton's connection to Nashville?

I went down and made phone calls myself today. Lived and worked here all of my life, since that seems to matter. Good to see Mrs. Johnson taking a stand against as well.