'Daily Voting News' A tribute to the author. April 29, 2009.

I'm sure that most, if not all, of you have heard of our loss of John Gideon. I'm also sure that you appreciated his faithfulness in providing you with up-to-the-day information about election issues.

He appreciated your faithfulness, too. Your work and personal engagement with him was a great inspiration to him and provided tremendous motivation for him to continue his work. Some of you expressed your gratitude to him in personal emails, which never failed to delight him. All of you expressed your appreciation by remaining subscribed to Daily Voting News. I don't say this lightly. He experienced your continuing subscriptions as appreciation for his work.

To state the obvious, John cannot be replaced. But DVN, John's personal brainchild and invaluable contribution to VotersUnite.Org, has become an essential resource in the election integrity community and beyond. I want to reassure you that I am working with other colleagues of John to figure out how VotersUnite can continue a form of DVN even in John's absence. Hopefully, it will not be long.

Many tributes to John and his work have been posted on many sites. I am including links to three. Sharing our memories of John and even our sorrow in losing his active presence is one way to draw strength from this untimely loss.

VotersUnite.Org: Celebrating the Life Of John Gideon

Bradblog: In Memoriam: John Gideon, 1947-2009. Father, grandfather, husband, veteran, patriot, co-director of VotersUnite.Org, democracy advocate, blogger, friend ...

NCVoters: Tributes to John Gideon, RIP National Election Integrity Hero (A collection of tributes from around the web.)

Ellen Theisen
Director
www.VotersUnite.Org