Barack Obama

Here's How to Register for Your Civic Duty on National Voter Registration Day

President Obama said Tuesday you can't "sit home and gripe about how terrible Washington is" if you don't vote to try and do something about it

Election Day is in 42 days, but you have to plan ahead if you want to make your voice heard.

That's what National Voter Registration Day is for. Volunteers have been fanning out across the country Tuedsay to encourage Americans to register (or re-register) to vote. The event's site says that six million people didn't vote in 2008 "because they missed a deadline or didn't know how to register." 

Some states offer online voter registration, and for others, the National Voter Registration Day site can email a copy of your state's form to you. Registration drivess have been organized across the country, and there's a map on the National Voter Registration Day site that collects them all in one place.

Click here for more information.

An entire movie is even getting in on the action. Fox Searchlight, the distributor of the Nat Turner slave rebellion drama "The Birth of a Nation," which opens in October, said it was holding voter registration enrollment in theater lobbies Tuesday, with 20 theater chains and independent theaters participating.

President Barack Obama proclaimed the first official Voter Registration Day last year, while marking the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Obama spoke to Ryan Seacrest on his radio show Tuesday to repeat his call to have people vote.

"You can't complain, you can't sit home and gripe about how terrible Washington is, how unfair this or that is, if you're sitting on the sidelines and not participating," he said.

NBC News reports that the day has taken on political tones, even though it's a non-partisan event, since some Republican-leaning states have been taken to court over restrictive policies on people getting or staying registered to vote, while some states that lean the other way are expanding access to the rolls.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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