Crossposting this from my own guild's boards. I'd like to encourage everyone to vote, even if your state is "blue" or "red" because there is a lot more going on in the world other than Bush and Kerry. In fact, the people that effect your lives the most are those that your vote also matters the most in -- your local elections.

When I lived in the Czech Republic, every day when I went to school I walked past a bronze plaque on the side of the wall. It was a imprint of a boys face, no older than me at the time, and a large portion of the face was melted away. This boy, sad to say, I've long since forgot his name ... but there was one summer day in 1968 in Czechoslovakia that everyone would know who he was. The night before, August 21st, the Soviet Union rolled their tanks into the heart of Prague in order to quell the "uprising", the Czechosolvak's recent election for their own Communist officials. Not even would they be allowed to elect their own Communists to run their country, as opposed to having to listen to Communists miles away in Moscow.

This boy, this man ... stood in front of the lines of tanks pouring into the city and covered himself in gasoline and ignited himself on fire. "To not have the right to vote." he said, "was to be dead anyway." Every day, when I went to school in the same building this young man took classes. I remember being homesick, I remember the bitter Prague winters, I remember the horrible foodsickness we called the "Koleh Komenskeho Plague", and yet ... I, as we all are, have the fortune to be able to go out tomorrow and vote and have a voice in the future of our country: from president to school board, without having to worry about tanks rolling down my street tomorrow and a soldier pulling me out of bed demanding why I voted for someone other than the "popular" candidate of the time.