Bill Clinton campaigns for Obama

DENVER - As the early voting in Colorado will come to an end today ( November 2), former president Bill Clinton, the other day, campaigned at two stops in this beautiful state for President Barack Obama firing up the people to vote for him as he had superior economic, education and health plans than governor Mitt Romney.Bill Clinton’s visit came after President Barack Obama cancelled his scheduled campaign trip of Colorado for the same day due to Hurricane Sandy. President Bill Clinton’s trip is a part of his aggressive campaign for Obama and Vice President Biden through battleground states including Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan also had to cancel a Colorado trip for the same reason. Obama and Ryan both are likely to visit Colorado on Thursday, a day before the end of early voting. Clinton after his speech at Adams City High School, Commerce City while addressing the people at Manual High School of Denver severely criticized Mitt Romney what Clinton called his unclear plans to erase the national debt. Former president drawing a comparison between the announced plans of President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney on economy, budget, health, education and jobs stressed that the former had better and sharp plans than latter’s. “If you believe that Romney will give boost an economy, vote for him otherwise vote for Obama,” he said. He fired up supporters the Democrats to vote for Obama and asked them to go out and deliver Colorado for Obama”.  He also praised the President for expanding grants for needy college students, At the end of his fiery speech, he said that Obama was strong and diligent in protecting the national security and added , “ If you want to protect your national security, vote for Obama’ as his policies indicate that America’s future is sure”.November 6 will be Election Day in US, however, people cal vote early at voter service centres that usually starts in October and ends before the Election Day. As the schedule for early voting is different in different states, early voting in Colorado had started on October 22 and will end on November 2 and throughout the US it will come to an end on next Monday.This reporter on Wednesday had the opportunity to visit voter service centre at Denver Elections Division (Main Office) where voters can cast their early voter daily from 8am to 6pm except Sunday.  Voters in US can cast their vote through three different ways: by mail, through manual method and through electronic voting method and all three services are available at any voter service centre. The facility of electronic voting for handicapped persons is also available at all voter service centres and polling stations. Voters who request a ballot by mail receive a mail-in ballot and can drop these ballots in the mail ballot boxes.According to the official website of Denver Office of the Clerk and Recorder, there are 13 voter service centres in Denver for early polling. Similarly, there would be 149 polling stations in Denver on polling day and the city has a population of more than six hundred thousand people.In US, ballot papers for the voters are available in as much as languages being spoken in any state and in Denver ballot papers are available in English and Spanish. On a ballot paper, every voter has to complete the broken arrow in front of the candidate of his own choice as incomplete arrows are marked in front of every candidate name. And according to Alton P Dillard, II, Public Information officer/ Legislative Liaison at Denver Elections Division, they are very little chances of the cancellation of any vote if someone mistakenly marks circle or some other symbol else in front of the name of candidate of his choice instead of completing the broken arrow. “Because, we send back such ballot papers to the concerned voters for verification and we have the eight days for this process after the Election Day,” he added.There are six rules to follow the voter to vote in the voter service centre: no campaign attire, this includes hats, pens, shirts etc; no smoking; no guns or weapons of any kind; no loitering and  no use of phones, laptops, PDAs, cameras or any other electronic devices in the voter centre. Similarly, the last one is that poll watchers, media observers and official observers may not be within six feet of the voting booths, voting machines and ballot boxes.It is necessary for every person to get registered his vote and voting lists have no photographs here. The judges sitting at the voter service centre electronically match the signature of every voter on the ballot paper with the signature already made on the voter registration form. According to Dillard, if some voter’s signature does not match with the earlier one, then we don’t cancel his vote, first the polling agents of the relevant candidates decide that if the actual person had actual signature and if they have no consensus, then we send a letter to the concerned person asking his ID, signature or driving license to re-verify. “And we can also send his signature for verification with district attorney office,” he added stressing that there were very little chance in US about the cancellation of any vote as they had different methods of re-checking and re-verification.Alton P Dillard said, “We pride ourselves on our transparency to sensitise the voters that presidential elections were fair and reliable”. He also viewed said that were very few  chances and even you could say no chances of rigging in US election as they had different mechanism in place to ensure transparency.

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