I'm not sure how it happened, but I missed most of Banned Book Week, only noticing it late in the week. I'll blame it on the ACLU, which doesn't seem to be doing much locally to promote the event. They are certainly doing their share to prevent the banning of further books, though, through their continued fight against the Vamos a Cuba ban.

But on the off chance that you missed it, too, here are a few links of interest. Hell, the effort to restrict our freedom of thought goes on year round, these days; perhaps we need a Banned Book Year.

• First, the American Library Association official banned books site
• Google Book Search has a nice list of banned titles, with the chance to read bits of many of them
• And what's life without a little controversy? Librarian.net points out some of the oddities in the ALA's quasi-ownership of BBW (hey, that makes two things I like using those initials!).

On a related note, in reading about this I learned of the existence of SafeLibraries.org. If you manage to filter out their inflammatory rhetoric, some of their members may indeed be well-meaning people who are afraid of what their children might learn in the library. However, when there is an entire section called Porn Pushers which describes — in a cornucopia of font sizes, weights, and colors — how the ALA is part of a plot to destroy America, and "[...]how the ALA pushes porn on children and gets away with it scot free, even getting librarians and school administrators to assist in this effort nationwide," it gets hard to take them seriously. Most of the librarians I know are just about organized enough to shelve books properly; they certainly aren't capable of organizing a global conspiracy to corrupt the minds of our children. Besides, I have friends who are librarians, and they never share their porn!

Anyway, unless you are a deranged and frothing conservative nutjob, or a liberal looking for a fresh source of justifiable outrage, steer clear of this crew. And with the time you save, read a banned book. May I recommend Vamos a Cuba?

I am happy to report that through the efforts of NicFitKid and my own fevered brain leeching off the collective unconscious, Hidden City is ranked #4 by Google among sites referencing Cuban Robots, and we're steadily increasing our rankings for Edwardian erotica. This almost makes up for being ranked third for Nutristorage, which is bringing in all the survivalists.

It's almost time for the 2006 Miami Book Fair International, South Florida's annual orgy of reading and writers. I was getting worried —— the committee is quite late in getting membership materials out to previous contributors, and in spreading the word about this year's authors in attendance.

While I recognize that the fair is a volunteer-run event —— in spite of all the international acclaim it receives — I admit that the lack of attention to their web site irks me just a wee bit. Once you get past the home page all the addresses include "/2004/" in the string, which is a bit sad. It's also sad that as of this writing —— and in spite of Mitchell Kaplan's assurances in the cover letter sent to past Friends of the Fair —— actually registering and donating to the event requires you to print a Microsoft Word document and fax or mail it to Miami-Dade College. If this was a Star Wars convention run at the Days Inn for a hundred sweaty geeks I'd look the other way, but this is a week-long event with hundreds of authors in attendance and thousands of attendees spending huge sums of money. It's a bit embarrassing.

This won't stop me from contributing, though, and it sure as hell won't stop me from attending. I mean, c'mon! Jules Feiffer will be there! And for you political types, Helen Thomas! And for fans of young adult fiction, Lemony Snicket Daniel Handler! And a lot of other great writers and interesting people, too, as I'm certain my literate and faithful readers will point out to me once they peruse the list.

The "An Evening With..." Lecture series runs November 12––19, and the Street Fair is November 17––19.

Passing through my rather extraordinarily overworked, overstimulated, and overwrought brain these days are the following streams, many of which are actually — and oddly — job-related:

• incidence of divine influence among otherwise unremarkable artists
• impact of housing costs on executive recruitment in South Florida
• connections between Southern Gospel music and Greek tonalities
• the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918
• evaluation of new and existing personal geek gear
• use of 2/3 patterns in interface design, as regards symbolic resonance between poetic meters and musical time signatures
• efficacy of torture as a punitive instrument, and as a campaign strategy
• effectiveness of self-selected structure versus externally-imposed structure
• Western tendency to distrust success while still striving toward it
• Edwardian pornography
• the cyclic nature of my association with the outside world
• Hallowe'en plots and preparations
• just how damned self-absorbed this manner of post really is.

What's on your mind?

Here's an event to make me consider leaving my cave. Tomorrow night in Coral Gables will be the Gifted Rums Tasting Event. Hosted at Katrine's [Warning: Flash and audio], the tasting will include sampling of premium rums from around the world, as well as dinner. The price is $69 a person, which isn't at all bad for a fine meal and the chance to taste the finest examples of the pinnacle of the distiller's art. But hurry, as today is the last day to reserve your place at the table. Visit the Gifted Rums website to make your reservation, or call 305/443-7973.

Well, the blogination thing is over, and it seems to have worked fairly well. Some new sites got fresh exposure, and some old sites were shaken up a bit. (I'm sure you all enjoyed MG's post here.) I admit that I'm not very happy with my own contribution, but I already knew that my style doesn't mesh very well with blogging. Sadly, Sara's readers were subjected to the empirical proof; I trust they will all recover.

This does raise an important question: what the hell am I doing, anyway? I'm clearly not blogging as the term is generally understood — writing short summaries of current news items pertaining to a specific topic or group of topics. But I'm writing for public consumption and posting things in reverse chronological order, so I'm living in the same neighborhood as blogging. Ah, well, I am that I am.

[The following is Miami Gringo's guest post on this site, as part of Miami Cross Blogination Day. Personally, I have contributed to a lowering of the standards at All Purpose Dark. – mkh]

It's not often I post regarding other's misfortunes, but it does happen occasionally. This morning's winner of the "Daily Dope" award involves some individuals that work in my building, but don't directly work with me.

My building consists of eight floors, many of which are fully occupied by hard working American citizens just trying to get by in life. The types of offices are numerous and varied, encompassing everything from temporary employment agencies to secondary offices for one of the leading cruise lines in the world. The offices I work with in particular are Governmental in nature, so there is a good mix of both private and public industry, young and old workers, and just about every ethnicity one can imagine. This sets the scene for some very amusing situations.

On this particular day, two out of three elevators that service these eight floors were out of order, with clearly posted signs specifying their current condition. One of these elevators has its door open, with a sign in the back of the elevator showing "Out of Service," with all the floor lights lit up and obviously not going anywhere. With this said, the situation itself makes for some fairly long waits while pressing the elevator call buttons to simply get to your office.

This scene in particular takes place in the morning, with no less than fifteen people waiting on the ground floor in order to take the elevator to their respective cubicles. Enter two people whom I know simply dubbed here as "Muscles" and "Picky", aptly named for their stocky build and obsessive nature respectively. With utter disregard for the other fourteen people waiting at the elevator lobby, Muscles looks at me and says "Hey we're gonna take this other elevator over here - are you just going to stand there?" I respond simply "Yep, I'm not in any rush to get to work. See ya' later!" And off they go to inhabit the elevator with its doors open, not reading the sign that specifies its condition, and totally ignoring the growing crowd of people that are smart enough to know better.

Five minutes we waited, five minutes they stood in the broken elevator trying to get it to work. Five minutes the crowd listens to these guys talk to each other, pressing buttons, wondering why the elevator isn't responding to their commands. Finally, the working elevator comes, the crowd starts piling in, Muscles and Picky get out of their elevator and begin following. They ask me, as the door to the elevator closes without them in it, why I didn't tell them that elevator wasn't working. I respond simply "I thought it was obvious, and I wanted to see if you guys could get it to work!"

Congratulations, Muscles and Picky - you've won MG's Daily Dope award. In the words of Bill Engvall, "Here's Your Sign!"

[My thanks go out to the lovely, talented, and socially-conscious Rebecca Carter of greenerMiami for arranging all this foolishness. The poor child had no idea what she was in for, I suspect.... – mkh]

Tuesday is the big Miami Cross Blogination thing. Instead of my words (or lack thereof) you will be treated to a post from the Miami Gringo. My own musings (such as they are) will be found on All Purpose Dark. But check out all of the bizarre mis-matching of writers the day has to offer. You may just discover a new site you love (or love to hate).

Following the recent burglary of my car, I had to make a trip to a body shop to get an estimate on replacing the ashtray (also know as parking pass and loose change storage compartment). Across the street from the shop is Southern Memorial Cemetery, a place I'd passed many times before, but never stopped to visit. I took advantage of my proximity to wander over and snap a few photos.

It's a quiet little park first opened in 1941. It is notable — to me, anyway — for its small number of vertical markers, and for the giant painted elephant and lions memorial to the members of the Miami Showman's Association.

The first time I was involved in a "blogging community" it was pretty geographically diverse. We were brought together by common interests, or just mutual admiration of the writing we produced, not by neighborhood.

And back in those proto-blogging days, when all the world's bloggers could probably fit into a high school gymnasium and still have room for the pep band, we would periodically take breaks by inviting other members of the community to post to our sites. Often this was done during vacations or business travel, when 'Net connections might be hard to manage, so that some continuity could be preserved. And like I said, we mainly read each other's sites, anyway.

In September of 2001 I went to a web conference in San Francisco, a five day affair which was quite interesting and educational, somewhat to my surprise. One of the later events was a little side panel on blogging, tucked away in a small room on the show's periphery. The panel was hosted by Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger, and Maggie Mason of Mighty Girl. Surprisingly only three people showed up for the discussion, so it basically turned into a chat about our goals, and checking out each other's sites on Evan's laptop.

As they were typing Hidden City into the browser I mentioned that a friend was guest posting for me while I was away. As the page loaded Maggie started to laugh behind the screen, followed by Evan. As I peered around to look she said "Well, when the cat's away...". The display was filled with a dozen or so animated GIFs, or actually one animated GIF repeated a dozen times: my head, wearing a fez, spinning like a catherine wheel; at the conclusion of each rotation the fez popped off in a disturbing manner. Everyone agreed that it was quite funny, and cleverly done, and I certainly couldn't argue.

But you will understand, I hope, that I am only somewhat disappointed not to have this GIF in my possession any longer.

So it is with some trepidation that I agreed to participate in the Miami Cross Blogination project. On Tuesday, September 19, a group of local writers will trade sites for the day; Miami Gringo will be posting here, and I will contribute to All Purpose Dark. Other than a vague suggestion that we stay within the general theme and "content rating" of the site, there are no rules for the event. It should be interesting, in no small part because I admit that prior to this event I was not familiar with either of these writers.

Let's see what happens when we mix things up a bit.

It's a perfect example of why I tend to rail against the insidious influence of the marketing-industrial complex. Gradually marketing — particularly this odious sort — erodes trust among communities, and discourages the honest and open exchange of information. It simply lowers everyone's quality of life.

Incidentally — and for the sake of my friends in the field — I make a distinction between advertising and marketing. The former is the process of letting people know that you offer high-quality goods or services, while the latter uses psychology to convince you that you will be mocked by your peers and your life will not be complete unless you bankrupt yourself purchasing those goods and services. It's the difference between a whore on 79th Street advertising her services wearing a gold lamé halter top, black leather mini-skirt, and fuck-me pumps; and a wanna-be trophy wife.

Please accept my apologies for my poorly timed fade, but the general hoopla surrounding September 11 — and the near-homicidal rage induced by hearing semi-sentient politicians utter the phrase "war on terror" in hushed and reverent tones — pushed me deeper into hermit mode than usual. And when I go into hermit mode, I try to do what all good Americans do when faced with unpleasant truths: I watch television.

Of course, having neither cable nor satellite service and only a couple of heavily ghosted broadcast channels, I watch DVDs. In the last few days I've plowed through seasons five and six of The X-Files and the first part of season two of Lost. Of course, this was in addition to reading books one and two of Lost Girls, The King in Yellow, and the first part of The Big Over Easy. Work, sleep, car repairs, et cetera all was scheduled around my escape into fiction.

I'm working my way back to consensus reality, though, and just in time. There are a few oddities coming up which should prove interesting. You'll hear about the first tomorrow.

It's a fact of life on the web: personal sites close down. The demands of off-line life may necessitate a hiatus, or perhaps the author simply loses interest in writing. Most bloggers create and distribute their work for free, so when faced with adversity it can be difficult to make publishing a priority.

Of course, most of the time the author will make a brief announcement that she is "taking a break," to let their regular readers know that updates will not be coming for a while. When a site closes down permanently there will often be a farewell post, sometimes with explanations, sometimes without. But sometimes a site will be abandoned without any explanation whatsoever.

During my time on-line I've experienced this sudden absence on a few occasions, where a writer who I enjoyed just stops writing. When it was a person to whom I felt a personal connection, or who had posted about personal worries or depression, the abrupt disappearance was more troubling. Still, though, there was nothing I could do. The unanswered questions nag at me for a while, but the web is a vast space, and soon enough something new comes along to distract me.

On three occasions, though, the questions were answered, although without favorable outcomes. Three times there were delayed updates to the site, posted by family members who bore the burden of telling a community they neither knew nor understood that the person behind the words had died: twice from suicide, once from a disease we never knew she was fighting. While difficult to read, at least there was a sense of closure, with the open comments on the sites serving as digital wakes.

With the explosion of blogs, journals, and MySpace pages in recent years, these events are almost commonplace. The availability of Internet access to the armed forces has enabled many soldiers to create blogs, and soldiers die with appalling frequency these days; it is a certainty that many of those new bloggers are gone. All told, by this point there must be thousands of electronic revenants haunting the web, some with closure, some simply remaining unsolved forever.

I don't want that to happen to me, or to this site. In the past I made arrangements with a friend to act as my on-line executor, sending her the account names and passwords she would need to post on my behalf, and the text of my final published words. However, even with the planning, I never got around to completing that final step. When the project went past theory and into practice there was just something vaguely unsettling about it all.

Of course, a couple of years ago I nearly died, without having finished that chapter. While I was in the hospital, waiting my turn for surgery, I fired up the laptop and wrote the epilogue to my on-line life. It was tough; you can't exactly ask someone to edit something that personal, and I am not immune to the irony of having my last words be full of misspellings and grammatical errors. Fortunately, it wasn't needed; Demerol is an excellent painkiller, but a lousy muse.

What immortality I may achieve will be digital — bit-based words swirling through the Internet's luminiferous aether until the last server is unplugged. I can't say with certainty that it will ever mean anything, but I will do my best to provide a reasonable "final episode."

"Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold." — Helen Keller

Sixteen years in the making, this month Top Shelf Productions finally published Lost Girls, a classic bit of pseudo-Edwardian erotica (or pornography, if you prefer) involving three women of three ages in a hotel, discussing their amorous exploits in explicit detail. While porn isn't exactly hard to come by, and even erotica has become commonplace in this wired age, three aspects distinguish this work from others of its type.

First, it is a hardcover graphic novel — three slipcased volumes of full-color illustrated erotica telling an actual story. Second, the writer is Alan Moore — writer, musician, mage, and provocateur — well-known for his deconstruction of heroic myths and complete indifference to social conventions. Third, and to the minds of many, most importantly, the three women telling their erotic histories are named Wendy, Dorothy, and Alice. You are probably familiar with them.

Months before its publication the book was already controversial. Some people have taken offense at the use of well-known and popular characters for such a project, particularly characters from books primarily seen as children's stories. Others inherently dislike and distrust the subject matter, feeling that any book which deals with human sexuality is automatically suspect. And amazingly enough, there is still a large group of adults who feel that any book combining words and pictures is for kids, and should be written accordingly.

I won't speak of the content of the book until I've read it myself. Fortunately, my copy arrived today, so a review shouldn't be long in coming. I can report, however, that the production values are great; it is a library quality set, with thick paper, beautiful printing, sturdy bindings, and lovely design. Based purely on this I am happy with the value received, and it isn't a cheap book.

If you are interested in more detail while I am reading, here are some links to interviews with the creators, advance reviews, and a little bit about the controversy. Please note that many of these links include sample illustrations from the book, so if you don't want to see line drawings of naked people or explicit sex acts, turn off images in your browser or something.

• Top Shelf Productions, publishers of Lost Girls
• The current status of the Peter Pan copyright is in dispute. Neil Gaiman provides a bit of background.
• Never Neverland: Peter Pan and perpetual copyright.
• The Onion's A.V. Club has an in-depth interview with Moore.
• Nerve interviews Moore and Gebbie.
• Nik Derga of Blogcritics offers this analysis, with comparisons to Moore's other work.
• Suicide Girls (totally not safe for work) offers separate interviews with Moore and Gebbie.
• Neil Gaiman's review, which gave me the impetus to spend a big chunk of cash on a book I'd never seen.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some Edwardian porn to read.

No, it isn't your imagination. The Labor Day post didn't appear on Labor Day due to some technical difficulties on my end. But it is published now, for what it is worth.

Today is an election day. If you have the inclination and haven't done so already,m go and vote. More importantly, though, if you have chosen not to vote, why not? I'm not judgmental on the topic at all, but I am very curious as to why someone would opt out of the system.

Did you vote, or did you skip it?

When I was eighteen I had a job as a "deluxer" for the soon-to-open Sears at the Broward Mall. The job entailed prepping and setting up the display model appliances on the sales floor: removing the carton, cleaning off the tape, assembling any parts shipped disassembled, and so on. It was only a short-term job, though, just the few weeks before the mall officially opened.

Frankly, the job sucked. The building wasn't yet finished, so there was no air conditioning, and I was dragging ranges and dishwashers up a non-functional escalator to the appliance display floor. Also, the smell of a brand new refrigerator is not pleasant, as I think they use formaldehyde to keep mold from forming inside during shipment. Between the heart, the exertion, and the chemicals, I spent most of each day that summer feeling like I was about to vomit. But hey, the money was good.

One day our task was to drag up some washers and dryers and set them up. I'd been on the job for a few weeks, so we were getting pretty fast at it; we had the boxes upstairs and the machines prepped quickly. The supervisor showed us where to arrange them, along a low wall with power outlets and water spigots spaced along the way. Since we were ahead of schedule, we went ahead and plugged 'em in and attached the hoses, then took our break.

When we came back there was a large group of men standing around the appliance area where we'd been working. Our supervisor asked me if I'd hooked up the machines, and I told him I had. I was a little concerned that I'd attached something incorrectly, but I couldn't imagine what it might be. One of the other guys, a stocky, bearded man, asked me if I was a union electrician or a union plumber. I told him that I wasn't, and he turned to one of the other men and said "Call the boss and tell him to shut it all down." A minute later whistles started blowing all over the building.

Our supervisor sighed, and told me and my work-partner to sit down and wait for him to come back. He and a couple of the union men walked off toward the offices, arguing all the way. One of the guys who stayed behind asked me if I was really so stupid that I'd try to get away with doing union work. I asked him in earnest what we had done that was wrong. He informed me that only a trained union electrician was allowed to plug anything in on this job site, and only a trained union plumber could attach any hose that carried water. I thought he was joking, and I said so.

That's when the shouting started. I was just some snot-nosed punk who didn't have any idea how the world worked, and I had better not try and interfere in union business or I could get hurt. I told him that if it took a union guy to stick a three-prong plug in the wall the world was in sorry shape. He shouted that I was taking food off his table, and I pointed out that he didn't look like he'd missed a lot of meals. I'm certain we would have come to blows if the supervisor hadn't returned.

The consequences were minor. Work would resume on the mall at once, provided that my partner and I apologize for our error. I was told that failure to apologize would result in my immediate termination. I really needed the money, so I did it.

The union teams then spent the next three hours undoing and redoing what had taken us fifteen minutes to do. On one trip walking past the gang the electrician asked me if I had learned anything today. I told him that yes, I had. I learned that the purpose of a union was to get incompetent people jobs, and that there is nothing lazier on earth than a union worker. From there it got ugly.

After my experience at the mall I spent the next decade denouncing unions at every opportunity. In a time when I was only marginally politically aware, I went out of my to tell people my story, doing everything I could to hurt the union cause, based on the actions of a couple of chuckleheads. No, it isn't exactly a shining moment in my political career, using revenge as my motivation for political action.

Oddly enough, my natural tendency is to side with unions. There are a great many employers who will take advantage of their workers without a second thought, if there is no check to their power. Unfortunately, the corruption inherent with accumulation of power doesn't respect ideological boundaries, and unions can be — and are — corrupted just as quickly as corporations.

In the end I suppose I did learn a couple of things. Unions are full of assholes, the same as any other group of people. Revenge is a poor reason for action, particularly when innocent people will be caught in the crossfire. And needing the money is not sufficient reason to do something you find personally odious.

I usually have a cup of coffee and read my e-mail first thing in the morning. Well, second thing, actually, after feeding the feline horde.

At about 8:30 this morning I put down the chow for the insiders, and then grabbed a cup of food for the hangers-on on the porch, opened the blinds, and wondered aloud why the contents of my car's trunk were on my lawn. Wondered aloud, with expletives.

I emptied the food into the cat's dish and headed to the car. The hole in the glass was visible from the porch. I mentally ran through a list of the contents of the car, and was curious as to who needed a 12-roll package of toilet paper so badly they would break out a window to get it. That would be some serious desperation, indeed.

So I called the MDPD, knowing that it was a formality. My home has been burglarized on two occasions, and both times the investigating officers told me they don't bother wasting man-hours on robberies and break-ins unless someone is injured. Such is life in South Florida.

While waiting for the PSA to arrive I called USAA to start the process of the claim. As always, the representative was helpful and pleasant, and while I was on the phone with her I started checking out the damage. From outside the car it looked as though the radio was missing, which seemed strange, as I removed the detachable faceplate when I got out of the car last and stashed it in the glove compartment. The ashtray was gone, meaning they got away with about $1.50 in pennies, nickels, and dimes. (They left a quarter on the floorboard.) The toilet paper was still in the backseat, so I ruled out Taco Bell as the motive.

In the yard behind the car was the non-functional ham radio I got for an art project, the non-functional monitor awaiting a trip to a recycling facility, my original car stereo (kept in case I sold the car), the box for my current stereo, and — oddly enough — the faceplate for the stereo. Just how stupid was this guy, to take the stereo and not the faceplate for it?

When the public service aide arrived it got even stranger. Since they weren't going to do any investigation, he told me to ignore the clearly visible fingerprints on the windows and door and open the car to check what was missing. The plastic trim was removed from the stereo, the wires were dangling down where the ashtray had been, but the stereo was still there. When I attached the faceplate, it still worked. And though he took the ashtray, he was nice enough to leave my obsolete work ID and garage pass on the passenger seat.

Unfortunately, he also left a lot of blood. I'm guessing he is new to this whole auto-burglary thing, because I've watched enough cop shows to know you wrap your arm in a heavy jacket before you smash through the glass. This joker obviously missed that step, as he left blood drops all over the inside of the car and some of the items on the lawn.

So in the end the only real damage is the $500 deductible I'm out for the repairs — and how much is a replacement ashtray for a 2000 Lumina going to cost me, anyway? — and the disruption of my peace of mind. I had just started to feel a little more secure after the robberies, and now we're back to zero.

Given that political maneuvering has pushed election regulations toward the complexity of Federal tax law, I thought I would provide a few tips and point out some common misconceptions about the process. Please note that the following applies to Miami-Dade County in September 2006 only. In Florida every county gets to make its own set of Byzantine and impenetrable rules at their whim, so if you don't live in Miami-Dade County, check with your local elections office to find out what hoops you need to jump through.

On Election Day, September 5, polls will be open from 7:00am-7:00pm. If you are in line by 7:00pm you will be permitted to vote, no matter how long it takes. Don't let anyone try to scare you away.

How to vote: There are three different ways you can vote: absentee ballot, provisional ballot, and electronic voting machine (DRE). They are not the same!

• Your best chance of having your vote counted is by using the machine. This is available at your polling place on election day, or at the early voting locations.
• Absentee ballots are intended as a last resort for people who cannot make it to the polls. They must be mailed in or hand-delivered to the county elections office, and cannot be turned in at your precinct. In spite of what some well-meaning paper ballot advocates may tell you, absentee ballots are less likely to be counted than electronic ballots. They are subject to challenge by anyone who wants to challenge them (usually for partisan reasons), and have a high chance of being rejected by the review panel.
• A provisional ballot is your only choice if something goes wrong on election day: you forget your photo ID, your name doesn't appear on the voter rolls, you go to the wrong precinct, etc. They are provisional, meaning that someone in the elections office will look it over and decide if your vote should be counted or not. They exist primarily to make you feel better about not getting to vote.
• Please note that if your absentee or provisional ballot is rejected, you will be notified within thirty days, for all the good it will do you.

Voter ID: You may not realize it, but you no longer have a Voter Identification Card. If you check the fine print it is a now Voter Information Card, and does not count as ID at the polls.

• Your voting location (polling place) and district candidate races are listed on your Voter Information Card. This card does not serve as identification that will allow you to vote.
• To be allowed to vote you must provide IDs with your photo and signature. There are a lot of different types of ID accepted, but both a signature and a photo are required. If you can't provide those, you are entitled to cast a provisional ballot (see above).
• If you have moved since last registering to vote, you must notify the Elections Department of your change of address. You are supposed vote at the correct precinct for your current home address.
• If you need to change your address on election day, and can provide your current address, the clerk will fill out an affirmation to record this change and allow you to vote normally. You should not fill out a provisional ballot.

What you can vote on: Republicans can vote in both Republican and Nonpartisan races; Democrats can vote in both Democrat and Nonpartisan races; all other voters can only vote in nonpartisan races (county commission, judges, issues and referendums, etc.).

Casting your ballot: Once your voting eligibility has been determined, you will be asked to sign both the precinct register and a Voter Authorization Slip. This will serve as a pass for voting and will be counted at the end of election day to reconcile the number of votes cast against the number of voters at the precinct.

• If needed, you will be provided instructions on how to vote using the current voting equipment.
• If using the electronic system, don't forget to press the damned VOTE button. If you don't do that you've just wasted your time.
• You may ask for and receive assistance in voting (usually a translator, assistant for the disabled, etc.). Bother the voter requesting help and the person providing it have to fill out and sign forms.
• You do not have to vote in every race or on every issue. You can vote in all of them, some of them, or none of them. It is your choice.
• If you have requested an absentee ballot but decide to vote at the polls, take your ballot with you so it can be cancelled. You will then be allowed to vote at your polling place. Again, absentee ballots cannot be turned in at the polls for counting, but must be turned in to the Elections Department by 7:00 PM on Election Day.
• Unopposed candidates will not appear on the ballot.

Your signature: It is important to keep your signature up-to-date with the Elections Department. If there is any question about your absentee or provisional ballot (such as partisan mucking about in a close race), the first thing checked is if your signature matches the file signature. Incidentally, this is also used to validate petitions.

Problems: If something goes wrong, or if you think someone is trying to disenfranchise you (which is a legal way of saying they want to keep you from legally voting), here are some steps to take.

• If you experience any problem with the electronic voting machine, notify a poll worker immediately.
• If you make a mistake while casting your ballot on an electronic machine, do not press the VOTE button. That confirms your selections. Instead, follow the on-screen instructions to change your vote.
• Report any problem or violation of election laws to the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections at 305-499-VOTE (8683).
• If you believe that you voting rights have been violated according to state or federal laws, please contact the Florida Department of State, Division of Elections, at 1-877-868-3737.

Many races will be decided on September 5, so don't go into this blindly. Study a sample ballot, learn about the issues and candidates, and exercise your right to elect those representing you.

Special thanks to Activist Diana and the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition for helping to compile this list. Any editorializing is my own, as are any inaccuracies which may have crept in.