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Monday, September 15, 2008

Pottstown makes The New York Times

We're on the map.

The Borough of Pottstown, population 23,000, has made the pages of The New York Times.

The article focuses on how states deal with voting rights for felons.

Pottstown was recently in the news after the Obama Campaign put a sign on its downtown Pottstown storefront window encouraging felons to register to vote (and presumably support Barack Obama.)

The sign was taken down two days after I posted a blog entry questioning why the Obama campaign would encourage felons to register in an urban setting like Pottstown when it doesn't do the same in more affluent communities.

The Mercury editorialized about the controversy and our award-winning cartoonist, Alan MacBain produced one of his best entries.

The story also got the attention of Election Journal.org

This is what The New York Times wrote over the weekend:
Last month, Obama campaign workers took down a sign at their headquarters in Pottstown, Pa., that said “Felons can vote,” because it might have sent the wrong message.

“The fear is that it might cost them more votes to be portrayed as the candidate of the felons than it could gain them,” said Anthony C. Thompson, a New York University law professor and Obama campaign adviser. “This is a mistaken belief, in my view, when there are tens of millions of citizens with criminal records.”

You can read the full article at the newspaper's Web site.

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