RE: NPR Steal Back Your Vote Guide is NOT free

I heard about the Steal Back Your Vote Guide on NPR today. The purpose of the guide is to educate voters about their rights at the polls and is written in the form of a comic book. The person representing the guide indicated that it could be downloaded for free from the group's website. However, when I visited the website, I discovered that a donation was required to receive the voting guide. I felt mislead and found the requirement to donate counterintuitive to the passion the Steal Back Your Vote Guide has to educate voters. I expressed my disappointment and sentiments in more detail in a letter addressed to the Steal Back Your Vote Guide below.
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Dear Steal Back Your Vote Guide:

I was surprised to find that the Steal Back Your Vote Guide was not free after gaining this impression from an NPR news broadcast. Perhaps this was a misunderstanding on my part, but I'm terribly disappointed. It seems that the information you wish to disseminate should be given away for free. To me there is a conflict of interest between being passionate about educating voters about their voting rights and charging them for this information. This information should be available freely. In addition, the guide is running in Rolling Stone Magazine. The income generated from selling the guide to Rolling Stone should be sufficient to make the content available freely to the general public.

Nevertheless, the biggest problem with the required 'donation' is that many registered voters do not own the credit card or checkbook needed to make one over the internet. These individuals are are automatically prevented from becoming privy to the information contained in the Steal Back Your Vote Guide. I expect that low-income voters are most likely to be effected by this. When voter ID laws requiring voters to present a form of state identification such as a driver's license or passport were passed in several states, the percentage of registered low-income and minority voters casting their ballots in following elections dropped. A significant portion of voters in this demographic do not have a need for driver's licenses or passports because they do not drive or travel internationally. Their inability to present these documents on election day, therefore, prevents them from voting.

Finally, people who rely on their public library's computers for internet access, free email, and free blogging may be reluctant to use these computers to make purchases even when they do have a credit card or checkbook. The rise of identity theft causes people to take additional measures to protect their identities online, particularly when working on public computers.

Ultimately, I don't see a problem to request a donation for the Steal Back Your Vote Guide; I just don't agree that the donation should be required because it prevents the guide from being read by people who may need it the most.

Sincerely,

WillCharles

I'm very curious to see how the website responds. I rewrote and sent a new version of the letter on 10.23.08. I had not heard back from website regarding the first message yet at that time.