“Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.”             – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.”  – Emma Goldman

BLOG TOPIC: VOTING
Red Room member Patricia Barbee writes about finding a box of ballots as a child that had been thrown into the river by white Southern racists. Her Cherokee mother warned her to keep quiet: as a "Colored" family, they could be killed if the local Klan learned that they knew what happened. Please tell your own Election Day story in your blog this week, and tag your blog Election Day blog.

A few bloggers will receive books by Red Room authors:

• In Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America, Jay Feldman reports "(a) vital, engaging, and sometimes troubling story of modern America’s struggle to live up to its ideals."
• "With the sacred cows of American politics practically begging for someone to puncture their pomposity," Will Durst hits them in the funniest places in The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing: Common Sense Rantings of a Raging Moderate.
• The hilarious I Am America (And So Can You!) "contains Stephen Colbert's most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports, and many more topics, conveniently arranged in chapter form."

So post a blog entry today! For help on how to blog, please see the directions here. We'll choose one of these blog posts to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week. Post your entry by Friday at 10:30 a.m. PST (GMT-08:00) for consideration, and be sure to tag it with the keyword term Election Day blog in the Blog Keyword Tags field so we can find it. (Please don't forget the exact tag. For more information about tags, click here.)

And don't forget to read the entries from last week's favorite book creative challenge. From famous authors like John Irving to intriguing books by little-known authors, Red Roomers shared their recommendations.

Thanks as always for blogging!

–Huntington W. Sharp, Senior Editor, Red Room