8
-SMART OTE -V 88
PROJECT VOTE SMART: TRUTH YOU CAN TRUST
DON’T MISS PROJECT VOTE SMART AT THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION!
. art www.votesm
Information: Adelaide Kimball (406-859-8683, aelm@votesmart.org) Tony Boehm (608-239-0683)
or g
Open House at the Voter’s Self-Defense System Bus Every Convention Day—and Night— till One Hour After Gavel
• Get your free Voter’s Self-Defense Manual— 100 pages including key votes, camManual paign finances, special interests’ grades on your state’s congressional delegation, & more. • A 50,000 mile tour to deliver the Voter’s Self-Defense System directly to the people. • 1,000 Americans speak out against the candidates’ behavior, sending messages to them about their campaign behavior on an 8’ rolling American flag to be delivered to Washington, DC on Election Day. • See naked candidates stripped of the manipulative imagery of their campaign rhetoric. • Film showing 100,000 Republicans and Democrats joined to defend Americans against political abuse by their parties. • Special events each day honoring political journalists, young voters, and awards for candidates with Political Courage (details on back). details
VOTE for ME!
The Voter’s Self-Defense System Bus will be located at the Minnesota History Center at 345 Kellogg Blvd., in front of the John Ireland Blvd side entrance.
Tuesday through Thursday, 9.2-9.4: Media Days
• Free Reporter’s Source Books for political journalists, with extensive key issue briefs and a Golden Rolodex of sources—who knows what—in academia, think tanks, and groups on all sides of the issues, for checking the often misleading claims made by candidates. • A personal tour of our Reporter’s Resource Center where you can do your own fact-checking or have your own personal researcher assigned to help you. • Interview a Founding Board member to show how Americans can use the Voter’s Self-Defense System to defend themselves from the manipulative claims made by campaigns.
Wednesday, 9.3: Young Voters Day
• Explore the Voter’s Self-Defense System through film and the web site—created by 6000 students and volunteers from all 50 states and 20 foreign countries. • Web site contests to test your political knowledge, & prizes— t-shirts, penlights & more. • Win scholarships that pay room and board for 10-week internships at the Project’s extraordinary Great Divide Ranch research center. High in the Montana Rockies, this high-tech facility offers tennis, basketball, swimming, boating, horseback-riding, the world’s best fishing, hiking and skiing right out your cabin door. • Collaboration with Rock the Vote activities on-site. • FOOD & DRINKS! Try the standard fare being served up by the Democratic and Republican Parties: Baloney Sandwiches and Political Suicides (toxic drinks mixed by professional campaign consultants using attack ad elixir, big money brew, special interest serum and focus group fodder). Or try the special cocktails the Party Attack Machines are concocting to get rid of their opponents: the Obamatini (a VERY GREEN ELITIST blue soda), and the McCainarita (an OLD red fizz ON THE ROCKS).
Presidential, Congressional, Gubernatorial and State Legislative Candidates: Candidates See What They Really Look Like! • voting records • issue positions • ratings • campaign contributions • backgrounds • public statements
Thursday, 9.4: Candidate Heroes Day
• At 11:00 am Project Vote Smart will present certificates of honor to all candidates and incumbents passing their most recent Political Courage Test. • Each election year more than 12,000 candidates for office are asked if they will provide their positions on issues of known concern to the public—issues that their handlers may not have stamped as safe. Less than 50% of both major parties’ candidates agree to do so, for fear of opposition research, even when urged by 150 news organizations and key leaders of both major parties, such as Dukakis, Frist, Ferraro, Gingrich and others. • This growing attitude strips citizens of the one crucial component in the struggle to selfgovern—the right of every citizen to abundant, accurate and relevant information about what they intend to do for us—or to us—if elected. • We will recognize today the honorable conduct of those candidates who have shown the courage of their convictions by providing what the nation’s founders considered crucial: abundant, accurate, relevant knowledge about those who govern or those who wish to replace them: A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives. (Madison) A nation that expects to be ignorant and free, expects what never was and never will be. (Jefferson) Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded, most envied kind of knowledge, I mean the character and conduct of their rulers. (Adams)