I Voted Absentee — Again!

Once again, I exercised my Constitutional right and civic responsibility and voted absentee today! I am not sure if I am going to be able to get to vote on Election Day, so since I was across the street getting my new tabs for my van, I decided to vote today!

I am glad I did. I was the only one there, and had to search out a poll worker to help me vote. The signs are clearly marked and when I got to the place I was supposed to be, there was no one there. It was only about 4:10 PM, so I knew I had another twenty minutes before City Hall closed.

They were not exactly ADA compliant, (Americans with Disabilities Act), but I imagine they will be on Election Day. Since I was the only one there, they bent over backwards to make sure my experience was a good one. I was done in less than ten minutes. I am guessing many people will not have that same experience come Election Day!

Having voted absentee before, I knew what to expect and it lived up to my expectations.

I had to mention my sister, Tammy Patrick, and her involvement in the Voter Registration work she has done all over the country. It fell on deaf ears as the poll worker was focused on getting me voted.

I am positive not all of the polling places around the country will be like the one I voted at today.

My mother likes to tell a story about riding along when Tammy was the Federal Compliance Officer for Maricopa County in Arizona and had to take a voting machine to an Indian reservation the evening before the election, and pick it up again at the end of the day. It is a great story about how our indigenous people had never voted before in their own country. It is a great story about Tammy's dogged commitment to seeing everyone who is entitled to vote gets to vote.

There I go, wandering from my point again. As my longtime readers know, I have a tendency to do that. Let me get back to my original point of this post. I want to get this done today before it goes out to my subscribed blog readers, so let me wrap up this post.

We have all been told ad nauseam every election cycle to make sure we vote. I cannot end this with doing the same thing and stressing to every one of you to make sure you vote on or before November 4th!

The midterm elections are always a low voter turnout. We need to change that trend! I cannot encourage you enough to do your civic responsibility and make sure you exercise your constitutional right and vote!

Here is visual proof I voted today:

If my nose is not large enough for you now, you can always click on the image and make it larger!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

More News On Tammy

Since my last post getting you up to speed on what my youngest sister, Tammy, is up to these days, she has been flying almost nonstop from coast-to-coast and back again!

My August ninth post brought you to that point. However, since then she has been traveling and speaking from Anchorage to Buffalo, back to Washington DC for a couple days. Then, on Tuesday she came back to Minneapolis with my mom who was vacationing with Jeff and Tammy, so she could address a group of national legislators at the Minneapolis Convention Center on Wednesday, August twentieth where she then flew to San Francisco to address a conference there.

I just talked to her and she is doing a little shopping before she catches a late-night plane back to DC. She was busy and could not talk long so I did not get to ask her if she felt any of the earthquakes this morning near San Francisco. However, Tammy just sent a message to my mom telling her she slept through most of the earthquakes.

Tammy's husband, Jeff Farias, posted this interview from C-SPAN on his Facebook page today. I find it fascinating to see what her charge has been with this current position and how she is literally taking the message to the people. Click on this URL to view the C-SPAN video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq8yAOs502I&list=UUPwfTjrXfg1nJItqSl9I9BA

The Bipartisan Policy Center will have her traveling a lot this next year to year and a half. In fact, I asked her that the other night as twelve of our family members got to spend a few hours with Tammy having dinner at a local restaurant. She emphasized the words "a lot of travel" in her reply!

I did not get a chance to ask her how many people would be in the audience on Wednesday when she spoke at the convention center, but I am certain it was a large audience as every state has many state legislators.

If you watched the Question and Answer video from above, you can see they are trying to bring the election process into the 21st century, insure there are enough voting booths at every polling place, make sure everyone has the right to vote and make sure overseas and military ballots are counted. There are a couple more aspects of their assignment.

It is no small task, but spoken like a true proud, big brother she comes from a good gene pool and is up to the task! I can only imagine the places she will see, the people she will meet and the experiences she will have while she carries out this assignment.

She did show several pictures they took the day before in a Redwood forest north of San Francisco. The giant Redwoods are not something we all get to see every day. Several years ago I got to go through the Avenue of the Giants in northern California and experience three-thousand-year-old trees that rise three hundred feet and more into the air. If you ever get a chance to go through the giant Redwood or Sequoia parks, I encourage you to do it. It is something you will never forget.

There I go, getting off track again!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

The Latest News On Tammy!

As my frequent followers know, I am a proud big brother of all the accomplishments my youngest sister, Tammy, has been doing these last few years. Her most recent position after being a member of the Presidential Commission on Election Reform was announced on Thursday she will be working for the Bipartisan Policy Center located in Washington, DC.

Tammy and her husband, Jeff Farias, have relocated to a huge house on the Maryland shore for the next year to year and a half while Tammy works for the center.

To read the press release from the Center, click here. If that does not come up, you can get it at this URL: http://bipartisanpolicy.org/news/press-releases/2014/08/bipartisan-policy-center-presidential-commission-election-administration.

I especially like this paragraph taken directly from the press release: "BPC will focus on these key recommendations in the year ahead: reducing polling place lines, addressing the imminent voting machine technology crisis; online registration; cross-state data sharing efforts; improving the Department of Motor Vehicles registration process; ensuring that schools can be used as polling places; and creating opportunities for voting before Election Day."

I am so proud of the fact she is making a difference for the entire country. Voting for everyone is a right and she is helping to see everyone's vote gets counted. I believe that is a huge step forward in light of recent scandals we have had where people were not allowed to vote and laws have been written to exclude certain classes of people.

When Tammy was working on the commission, they often met with top officials in the  Executive Branch of the government including the president and vice president. I am attaching a photograph of one of their meetings when President Obama And Vice President Biden are looking at Tammy. I get a charge out of it every time I look at it: 

You can tell the President is talking to her because Tammy's name placard is in the lower right hand of the screen. Click on the image to make it larger:

This is the fifth post I put up about Tammy. If you click on her name below, you may read the other posts. Yes, I know I posted this picture in one of the other posts; but I am so proud of her and love this picture so much I cannot get enough of it!

Have I said yet how proud I am to be her big brother? Oh wait, I guess I did that in the last paragraph. Just pretend this paragraph does not exist.

Right now, my mother is visiting Jeff and Tammy for a two-week, well-deserved vacation. Tammy is getting back at her by taking lots of pictures of grandma doing everything from taking pictures when they visited Monticello to taking pictures of her with her toes in the sand of the Atlantic. Yes, mom had a book at Monticello and she took pictures of flowers.

Jeff's mother, Nancy, will be joining them soon, and the two grandmas will have lots of stories to tell each other. That is if they can keep their noses out of a book. Mom wrote in one of her threads how she had finished two books and was working on the third. I am sure that one is done by now and it is on to number four.

I am going to close this post with a picture of my mother relaxing and reading through her eyelids. If you know my mom, you know she loves flowers and books. She always has two or three books going at any one time. At seventy-seven she is living proof that lifelong learning is going on in her head.

Click on the image to make it larger:

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

The Super Bowl Post Has Been Preempted!

I was going to do this post on the upcoming Super Bowl XLVIII when I learned my sister, Tammy will be giving the opening keynote for the Voting and Elections Summit 2014 in Washington, DC tomorrow. The Super Bowl will just have to wait. After all, it is not every day a member of my family gets invited to the White House and meets the leader of the free world.

If you have been following my blog for some time, you know I have discussed Tammy's appointment by President Obama to serve as a Commissioner on the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. I have placed her bio here as it appears in the program for tomorrow's Summit:

Opening Keynote - Morning Session - Tammy Patrick

Federal Compliance Officer for Maricopa County Elections Department, Ms. Patrick is tasked with serving the 1.9 million registered voters in the greater Phoenix Valley. She collaborates with community and political organizations to create a productive working relationship with the goal of voter participation. In May of 2013 she was selected by President Obama to serve as a Commissioner on the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, the pinnacle of her career thus far. Her efforts in supporting good stewardship via sound data collection and analysis has afforded her inclusion in The Democracy Index by Yale Law Professor Heather Gerken, and a position on the Pew Advisory Board for an Elections Performance Index. Ms. Patrick was honored to represent Maricopa County by testifying in Congress in 2007 on the role of election audits.

Working to provide access to all voters, including those serving our country in the military or residing overseas, her analysis of UOCAVA voting populations was presented to the Technical Guidelines Development Committee at NIST in 2011; UOCAVA Voter Trend Analysis and Risk Assessment reviews what characteristics of the UOCAVA voter make them most susceptible to casting ineffective ballots, and if access to online information and process aid in mitigating those vulnerabilities. Her experiences are further shared with the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) working group on electronic voting. In 2012 Ms. Patrick was asked to join the IEEE P1622 group developing standards for a common data format for election results reporting.

Ms. Patrick has a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Purdue University and has attained accreditation as a Certified Election Voter Registration Administrator through the Election Center and Auburn University. She has worked in the elections field since 2003 bringing a background in corporate sales and customer service.

If I may say so myself, understand this is coming from a very biased opinion since she is still my baby sister, she has a pretty impressive bio, and has achieved a lot in these last few years.

These last months since she was appointed to this bi-partisan commission, they have crisscrossed the country several times listened to testimony and made recommendations to federal, state and local elections commissions on improving voter access so everyone's votes are counted, made sure military and overseas ballots were disseminated, processed and counted, and making sure no one has to wait more than one half hour to vote. Those are just a few of the high points in the commission's report.

The work of the commission was finalized and presented to the president last week and will be implemented in the upcoming elections. Here is a photograph taken from C-SPAN2's live broadcast last week when they made their results known to the press after the president had signed them:

I am attaching two more photographs taken in the Roosevelt Room earlier that day:

Click on the images to make them larger:

The top picture is the entire commission along with the Vice President and President. You know who the bottom two are, and look who they are addressing. If you look in the lower right-hand corner, you can see Tammy's name placard.

After this meeting, President Obama took the entire commission into the Oval Office and they had a group photograph taken. Tammy has assured us when she gets her copy of that picture she will let us see it. There may be another post in the making.

One more note, the President acknowledged the work of the Commission in last night's State of the Union Address. That was pretty cool!

Needless to say, I am a pretty proud, big brother today! My mother and other siblings are also extremely proud of the accomplishments and national work Tammy is doing on behalf of election reform in the United States.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Tammy Is Officially A Commissioner

It is official, Tammy Patrick is now one of President Obama's bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration. She, along with the other commissioners were sworn in this morning, June 21, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Here is a picture of the new commissioners: Tammy is the one wearing the pink blazer as she brought a little splash of color to Washington. Click on the image to make it larger:

It is a pretty impressive group of representatives from all over the country who have been involved in election administration for many years.

There is also a video of the entire proceeding you may watch by clicking here. It is fairly long and does not get started until about minute 18:30.

The Commission is charged with a number of things including:

• To ensure eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their votes without undue delay, which includes management of polling places, poll workers and voter rolls, voting machine capacity and technology, ballot simplicity and voter education, and provisional ballots

• To ensure the experience of voters facing other obstacles in casting their ballots, which includes overseas voters, members of the military, people with disabilities, voters with limited English proficiency, absentee voters and victims of natural disasters or emergencies.

It was fun watching Tammy introduce herself amongst this very distinguished group of commissioners. They start to introduce themselves at about minute 23:00.

You have all heard the old saying, "It's not what you know, but who you know." That is very true in many instances in our lives. Having this woman ask to speak to you because of your experience in getting disenfranchised people like the American Indians to enable them to vote for the first time certainly carries some weight in a place like Washington, DC.

If Sandra Day O'Connor asks to speak with you, you are well advised to take the meeting. Here is a photograph taken last year with the first woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court speaking with Tammy and asking for some of her ideas:

Again, click on the image to make it larger:

I can only imagine if people in Washington are telling Sandra Day O'Connor she should meet with you, it probably does not hurt your chances of being named to this commission.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

I am very proud of you Tammy, and watching your career develop.

Later,

Mike

Tammy Had Quite A Week!

If you read my last post of May twenty-first, you learned about my little sister, Tammy, being appointed to President Obama's Presidential Commission on Election Administration. You can read the entire post by clicking here.

Then, on Wednesday, one of the songs from her new CD entitled "A PrioriTy: Songs of a Bower Bird" debuted at number 17 on COUNTRY & ROOTS list of new songs!

Here is the listing. Click on it to make it larger:

To top that all off, yesterday she was sworn in! it is now official, Tammy Patrick is a Commissioner to President Obama's Presidential Commission on Election Administration! She is one of ten commissioners from around the country.

I would say that is a pretty good week! But then, I am a wee bit biased! Our entire family and many of Tammy's friends are all very proud of her accomplishments to this point, and looking forward to what she will accomplish as a member of this commission. It is all very exciting!

Have I said yet how proud I am of my baby sister?

If you would like to listen to parts of all of the songs on Tammy's new CD, purchase it or her other CD's, they are available at her website www.tammypatrick.com. Besides singing all the songs, she wrote all but two of them, they are "One More Dollar" and "Coat of Many Colors."

Monday was not only a Red Letter Day, but this week was an entire Red Letter Week for Tammy!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Proud Big Brother Mike

Tammy Is Going To The White House!

Some of my longtime readers remember my little sister, Tammy. In fact, when I first got hurt and there was a flu epidemic going on in Worthington, and no visitors were allowed into the hospital, especially small children. Back then they would not let young people in to visit sick family and friends, but my doctor had an order on my chart to make sure they let my three-year-old sister, Tammy, into see me whenever mom brought her to the hospital, which was every day.

Tammy was just a couple weeks short of her third birthday when I got hurt in 1971. I am attaching my all-time favorite picture showing my brother, Rick's dogs, my cute little sister and me just weeks before I got hurt.

Now, all these years later, Tammy has been appointed by President Obama as one of the ten commissioners to serve on the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. You may read the official press release by clicking here.

I will skip ahead a bit and give you her biography directly from the press release:

"Tammy Patrick, Appointee for Member, Presidential Commission on Election Administration
Tammy Patrick is currently a Federal Compliance Officer for the Maricopa County Elections Department in Arizona.  In 2013, she became a voting member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ working group on developing standards for a universal format for election results reporting.  She is also a representative on the Mailer’s Technical Advisory Committee to the U.S. Post Office and serves as the co-chair of the Postal Task Force for the Election Center.  She has previously served as a member of the Election Assistance Commission’s working group on Language Assistance for Unwritten Language, as an organizer of the 2007 Native American Voter Outreach Summit, and as a member of the Election Center’s National Task Force on Education and Training.  Ms. Patrick received her B.A. from Purdue University."

Have I said yet how proud I am of her? Our little Tammy is all grown up. She has a very impressive resume, at least from my perspective which might be a little bit biased. Here is Tammy today, as she prepares for frequent trips to Washington, DC to meet and advise the president and Congress on election reform and making sure everyone has the right and opportunity to vote.

It is a daunting task, but one I am sure she is up for as she has shown to this point in her career.

Congratulations, Tammy! I know you will do a good job, and make a difference in who knows how many people's lives? Have I said yet how proud I am of you?

Today, Tammy lives in Phoenix with her husband Jeff Farias and their son, Max.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Big Brother Mike