Democracy in Action: The What You Need To Know Ohio Primary List

I could point you to more bandwidth and pulp that contains information you should know as you monitor headlines and the Internet over the next three days for any and all news related to the Democratic presidential primary competition between Senator Hillary Clinton (NY) and Barack Obama (IL) than you would ever be able to consume, but what will any of that tell you that you can’t already figure out if you’re enough of a wonk or wonkabee that you’re reading this blog post or this blog at all?

If it sounds like I’m eschewing most of the conventional wisdom, nothing new there.

However, if you want the down and dirty news you can use version, a crash course in how to manage what will be unleashed by voters in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont, here’s Jill’s Must-Read Before You Rant List:

Morra Aarons: Who You Gonna Call? Obama, or Hillary? (be sure to see the open dissent flourishing in a civilized way in the comments)

Polls, polls and more polls

Clinton’s last ad, Obama’s last ad

How we hope Texas voters remember to do the Texas Two-Step (thank you, Dori!)

Predictions from inside Ohio on how many will vote (52%), weather and winning and delegate totals by congressional district

Anxiety over whether Ohio’s voting system will work (the Plain Dealer asks if we’re ready)

An informal poll of whether Ohioans are voting at all, absentee or in person (guess before you look; my hint to you is, well, if you read all the stories we do here about confusion and cynicism around the system…)

A video of a townhall session the Cuyahoga County BOE had last Wednesday (the post at that link has an excellent rundown of key points from the meeting)

To give background to why Ohio suffers from Post-Traumatic Voter Disorder, I wrote this post in 8/06 which links to a Salon article about six cases of voter suppression. I wrote, in response to Salon’s shameful six which included Ohio and Ken Blackwell, the following:

I regard the right to vote as an obligation and if I were Secretary of State (not a happening thing ever but we did discuss this briefly with SOS Dem candidate, Jennifer Brunner at her Meet the Bloggers session), I’d work with the Ohio Department of Education to make sure that the curriculum standards include hefty teaching on how your quality of life and your sense of ownership of this country and its government connect to the obligation to vote because it procures, secures and maintains both of those things.

Hope? It’s out there. I do know this. Kids seems to have it naturally. And as world-weary as we might get in our adulthood, we really shouldn’t ever forget that we can make a difference.

In the primary source reporting category:

-I’ve put in for a before and after call with Susan Estrich and will blog her perspectives if I get a chance for her to share them with me.

-I’ll be watching the returns from the WKYC studios with a few other bloggers, once again working on tuning up and making new media collaboration work.

-I splurged and got the Flip video camcorder, have practiced with it and believe that I will be able to overcome my Fear Of The Equipment that kept me from more adequately blogging the Cleveland debate.

Finally, I’ve saved the best for last, a story you will not find at any of those sources, that is the one story that will tell you, no matter how you feel about who becomes the Democratic nominee, democracy works better in our country than anywhere else on this planet:

I had to go to my kids’ school to pick up one of them who is sick today. The woman who entered the building just before me is the mother of three children and lives one town over. One of her children is in a private school, after being in public school for a few years, and her other two kids are still in the public school. She and her husband moved to Ohio from a wealthy county in Connecticut, they were just about to move elsewhere after being here for just two or three years and then, decided to stay, re-do their house and they’ve been here ever since.

As we walked into the building, chatting to catch up on the latest with each other, she told that she’d heard me on CPN and was still reading what I write and that she’d been googling for information on the Cleveland debate and my name came up over and over, though she hadn’t known that I had a blog.

She told me that she used to report on politics, before becoming a full-time mother and that no, she hadn’t been able to get a ticket. She agreed that it is a boring affair to be inside the audience itself but she is just mesmerized by what is going on. And here is where her story gets interesting:

She told me that she is a Republican but that for the first time ever, she is strongly considering voting Democrat, and voting for Obama. She said that she wanted to go to the debate to help her figure this out. However, she really feels that the competition between McCain and Obama would give her and Americans a fair better choice, a real choice, compared to McCain and Clinton.

She said that she feels guilty about her approach to the primary and the general. And that is when I told her, no. Do not feel guilty. Ohio allows us each to pull whichever party’s ballot we want and vote in the general anyway we want. Use that right, and pray that your vote gets counted.

For all the mess ups, manipulations and machinations we ascribe to our voting system, our electoral system, our presidential primary system, is there really, seriously, any question that the form of democracy we practice in this country is not dynamic while at the same time rock-solid?

Good luck to everyone in the primary voting states tomorrow. I look forward to the frenzy that I am certain will ensue, especially here in NE Ohio!