Today is National Voter Registration Day. Are you registered to vote? If not, click here for a national mail voter registration form. (You must have a U.S. address.)
If you are already registered, are you registered at the correct address? If you’ve moved since the last election, you need to change your voter registration to your current address. This will help you avoid any potential problems at the polls. To check if you are properly registered, or if you need to update your information, go to CanIVote.org and select your state, county or city in the drop down menu located just beneath the map of the United States.
In addition to registering and/or making sure you are properly registered, make sure your friends and family are as well. And then, vote early if you can:
Early Voting Rules for US Citizens Living in the USA
Voting for US Citizens Living or Traveling Abroad
And do what you can to help get out the vote. For those of you who can't physically help people to register or go to the polls, use social media if you can, e.g., Facebook and Twitter:
Finally, scientists have documented that spending time on Facebook isn't all about posting pictures of cute kids and running virtual farms — it can actually be useful to American society. A single election day message, sent to more than 60 million users of the social networking site, increased turnout in the November 2010 congressional election by 340,000 votes, researchers reported Wednesday. It may not sound like much, but in a close election — such as Florida's contested presidential vote in 2000 — that kind of bump could make the difference between a win and a loss, said UC San Diego social network researcher James Fowler, leader of the unusual experiment.
Fowler said that his team's study, published in the journal Nature, was the first to prove that activity on huge online social networks can affect consequential, real-world behavior. Tellingly, the get-out-the-vote message was most persuasive when it was passed along by close friends.
"There are tons of Twitter studies showing you can spread emotions," he said. "But here we have a third of a million people who did something very important" because of a one- or two-sentence online message.
"Without voting, we have no democracy," Fowler added.
If the polls do not appear, try refreshing the page.
