- It's just possible that you have heard this once or twice
before recently, but the forthcoming American election, on November 2,
may be the most important in living memory. People have been saying this
about every presidential race for decades - but, as one environmentalist
put it recently in a US newspaper interview, precisely the problem with
crying wolf is that sometimes there is a wolf. You would be forgiven, though,
for feeling increasingly helpless as you hear the "most important
election" mantra repeated daily: unless you happen to be a voter in
a handful of swing states, there's little you can do about the final result.
If you're not American, the situation is more acute. Certainly, the actions
of the US impact on our lives in overwhelming ways; British political life
may now be at least as heavily influenced by White House policy as by the
choices of UK voters. And yet, though the US Declaration of Independence
speaks of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind", you
don't, of course, have a vote. You can't even donate money to the campaigns:
foreign contributions are outlawed. And you're unlikely to have the chance
to do any campaigning on the ground. All you can do is wait and watch:
you're powerless.
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- Or are you? At G2, that sounded like fighting talk. Where
others might see delusions of grandeur, we saw an opportunity for public
service - and so, on the following pages, we have assembled a handy set
of tools that non-Americans can use to have a real chance of influencing
the outcome of the vote. We've identified ways to give money to help your
preferred candidate, even though direct campaign contributions from foreigners
aren't allowed. There are ideas for making your voice heard in the influential
local media outlets where it could really count. And at the core of it
is a unique scheme to match individual Guardian readers to individual American
voters, giving you the opportunity to write a personal letter, citizen
to citizen, explaining why this election matters to you, and which issues
you think ought to matter to the US electorate. It may even be a chance
to persuade somebody to use their vote at all.
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- To maximise the likelihood of your efforts making a difference,
we've zeroed in on one of the places where this year's election truly will
be decided: Clark County, Ohio, which is balanced on a razor's edge between
Republicans and Democrats. In the 2000 election, Al Gore won Clark County
by 1% - equivalent to 324 votes - but George Bush won the state as a whole
by just four percentage points. This time round, Ohio is one of the most
crucial swing states: Kerry and Bush have been campaigning there tire lessly
- they've visited Clark County itself - and the most recent Ohio poll shows,
once again, a 1% difference between the two of them. The voters we will
target in our letter-writing initiative are all Clark County residents,
and they are all registered independents, which somewhat increases the
chances of their being persuadable.
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- Several of the ideas described here can easily be applied
across the US too, though, and we have provided further resources on our
website for this purpose. While there's no point being coy about Britain's
preferences in this election (never mind those of Guardain readers) - a
poll last month put backing for Kerry at 47%, against 16% for Bush - we
have included information for supporters of both main candidates.
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- It's worth considering at the outset how counterproductive
this might all be, especially if approached undiplomatically. Anybody might
be justifiably angered by the idea of a foreigner trying to interfere in
their democratic process. But this year the issue is more charged than
ever: the Bush/Cheney campaign has made a point of portraying Kerry as
overly concerned about what other nations think, and the Democrat's ambiguous
debate point about American foreign policy decisions needing to pass a
"global test" has become one of the president's key lines of
attack. "People don't necessarily want to hear what people from other
countries have to say," says Rachelle Valladares, the London-based
chair of Democrats Abroad. "If you contact someone you know personally
in the States, and urge them to vote, it would probably carry twice the
weight." Michael Dorf, a Columbia university law professor who has
studied foreign influences on US elections, points out that it would not
be to either candidate's advantage "to be seen as the candidate of
the foreigners. Part of it's just xenophobia, but there is also a sense
that, you know, this is our election: you vote for your parliament and
prime minister, we vote for our president and Congress."
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- On the other hand, being from Britain ought to give you
a certain leverage: in stump speeches and debates, Bush has repeatedly
praised Tony Blair's cooperation over Iraq, making America's long-treasured
alliance with the UK key to the president's defence of his foreign policy.
Kerry, too, knows that he's speaking to a resilient strand of opinion when
he emphasises the need for strong international alliances: a better coalition
in Iraq, he constantly reiterates, might have saved US lives. (One recent
poll suggested that 43% of Americans think that declining world respect
for their nation is a "major problem".) As a British citizen,
you can certainly wield some influence, but you could seriously alienate
people too.
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- Write to a voter
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- The most powerful transatlantic connection is a personal
one, so we have designed a system to match individual Guardian readers
with individual voters in Clark County, in the crucial swing state of Ohio.
To join in, visit www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty and enter your email address.
You'll receive, by email, the name and postal address of a Clark County
voter. We have included only those voters who chose to list themselves
as unaffiliated, instead of as Republican or Democrat: that is no guarantee
that they are persuadable, of course, but it does increase the chances.
The data on which our system is based is publicly available, but we have
designed it to give out each address only once, so there is no danger of
recipients getting deluged.
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- In formulating your letter, you will need to introduce
yourself: no individual Clark County voter will have any reason to be expecting
your communication. And in choosing your arguments, keep in mind the real
risk of alienating your reader by coming across as interfering or offensive.
You might want to handwrite your letter, for additional impact, and we
strongly recommend including your own name and address - it lends far more
credibility to your views, and you might get a reply.
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- Finally, post your letter soon. Letters sent by regular
airmail from the UK to the US usually take five days to reach their recipient,
and there is little time to waste. Postage costs 43p for a postcard, 47p
for a letter weighing 10g or less, and 68p for a letter weighing up to
20g. You don't have to visit a post office, but Royal Mail recommends writing
"Par Avion - By Airmail" on the front of the envelope, and your
return address on the back.
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- Give money
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- American law forbids foreigners from giving money to
affect the outcome of a federal election - except that, on closer inspection,
it doesn't. You're banned from donating to the campaigns themselves, or
to many of the independent campaigning groups that fight explicitly on
behalf of one candidate. So you need to identify officially non-partisan
groups whose activities, none the less, have the practical effect of helping
one candidate over the other. "Perhaps the most important way foreigners
could help John Kerry would be to help out those organisations which have,
as part of their mission, fostering African-American voter turnout,"
says Nathaniel Persily, a Pennsylvania university expert on election law.
"It's quite clear that if there was 100% African-American turnout
in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, John Kerry would win this election running
away." The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
is the most obvious choice here - an influential, well-organised, non-partisan
body whose get-out-the-vote activities are extremely likely to end up helping
the Democrats.
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- "On the Republican side, it would be the Christian
conservatives," Persily adds. "[Bush adviser] Karl Rove has tried
to register four million additional Christian evangelicals, and if they
all turn out, then Bush wins." The leading option here would be the
Christian Coalition, which describes itself as "America's leading
grassroots organisation defending our Godly heritage". As for more
overtly partisan organisations, we don't recommend trying to donate - but
it's worth pointing out that much of the law banning foreign contributions
has never been tested in court and, argues Michael Dorf at Columbia, may
even be unconstitutional on grounds of free speech. "If a group calling
itself Europeans for Truth wants to run ads giving their view of the truth,"
Dorf says, "it's hard to draw a principled distinction between that
and a British newspaper available at a US newsstand that has an editorial
calling Bush and Blair liars."
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- Give to the NAACP: www.naacp.org/contribute.php or fax
a credit-card donation to 001 410 580 5623. Give to the NAACP in Ohio:
Send a money order marked "donation" to NAACP, 233 South High
Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 USA. Give to the Christian Coalition: www.cc.org
or phone 001 202 479 6900. Give to the Christian Coalition in Ohio: www.ccohio.org
or phone 001 330 8871922, or send a money order to Christian Coalition
of Ohio, PO Box 852, Westfield Center, Ohio 44251, USA. For resources on
giving money in other swing states, visit www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty.
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- Make your voice heard
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- If you want to broadcast your views to a wider audience,
focus on the media outlets swing-state residents are reading and hearing.
Take care: deluging the same organisation with numerous near-identical
messages rarely impresses (we speak from experience), and some activists
have run into controversy recently by disseminating "astroturf"
- letters purporting to be personal but emanating, in reality, from party
headquarters. Springfielders read the Springfield News Sun (www.springfieldnewssun.com);
and the Columbus Dispatch (www.dispatch.com), based in the nearby state
capital, is another influential outlet.
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- If you're feeling brave, though, you might want to explore
the highly influential talk-radio airwaves. On the right, the overarchingly
dominant figure is Rush Limbaugh, heard on hundreds of stations nationwide,
including 19 in Ohio, some of which can be heard in Clark County. This
is a strictly at-your-own-risk proposition, but if you want to join the
debate, listen to the show live on the web at www.rushlimbaugh.com, between
5pm and 8pm UK time every weekday, and call in on 001 800 282 2882. Among
yesterday's topics: why John Kerry doesn't understand the significance
of 9/11; why John Kerry would be dangerous for America; how John Kerry
politicised the death of Christopher Reeve.
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- Air America, the upstart liberal radio counterweight,
is still in its infancy, but it can be picked up in parts of Ohio and other
battleground states. Listen to the flagship show presented by the leftwing
humourist Al Franken at www.airamericaradio.com, also between 5pm and 8pm
on weekdays, then call in on 001 866 303 2270 (neither call will be free
from the UK). Franken's focus yesterday was the "absolutely shameless"
behaviour of the conservative media in America.
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- You can target your message on other key states by visiting
a website such as www.electoral-vote.com, which updates regularly with
the latest local polls, so that you can identify where the race is currently
closest. Select your state, then call up a list of relevant media contacts
- or even send them emails directly - via the impressively comprehensive
Capitol Advantage site at ssl.capwiz.com/congressorg/dbq/media/.
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- Win the chance to campaign on the ground
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- We are offering the four people who write the most persuasive
letters to Clark County voters the chance to travel there and campaign
in person. At the end of October, the winners will accompany a group of
Guardian journalists to Ohio to meet voters and participate in the closing
days of the race. For a chance to take part, you should email a copy of
your letter to clark.county@guardian.co.uk, or send a copy to Clark County
competition, G2, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. Letters
should arrive no later than October 20.
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- * For more details on how you can get involved and latest
news from the US campaign trail, go to guardian.co.uk/uselections2004.
For terms and conditions of the Clark County competition, see www.guardian.co.uk/clarkcounty.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1326033,00.html
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