It's not a movement to stimulate the vote, it's a movement to educate it.

Well-tempered and low-key, Jim Benelisha, the 56-year-old owner and operator of The Acoustic Coffeehouse, is a strong advocate of exercising his electoral muscle. With a week until the districts across the country close their doors to voters, Benelisha maintains a conviction of casting his ballot for representatives and not just candidates.

“Our culture has gotten itself so tied into the cult of personality that as far as elections goes, our priorities are backwards.” said Benelisha.

A long-time voter, Benelisha recalls his first election, Nixon vs. McGovern in '72.

“That was the first time they figured out how to manipulate the media and to just use the sound bites they wanted," he said. "It was kind of a masterful job to get Nixon elected.”

Benelisha was raised in San Pedro, Calif. and then lived in Berkley, Calif. during the late '60s and '70s, at the height of the counterculture movement, graduating from high school less than a year after the city had been brought under martial law by its governor, Ronald Reagan.

Five years later, with a new bride and child in tow, Benelisha moved from Martinez, Calif., near Berkley, to the mountains of Tennessee. 

A small-business owner of nearly 30 years, first with Jim's Tri-Cities Appliances and later with the five-years-running coffeehouse and laundromat, Benelisha belongs to a constituency that has been heavily courted this presidential election. But it's a much smaller scale that interests Benelisha.

“If change is happening, it has to happen on a local level first,” he said. 

Referendum, a direct vote by the electorate on governmental proposals, is something plenty of people are unaware still functions in Johnson City, Benelisha said. He hopes that with enough participation, it could be used to appeal on all manner of local matters, such as proposals on city-wide bike paths.

“It's about getting people ready to exercise their vote before they decide who that candidate is," he said. "Everyone agreeing that when it comes time to vote that they're going to vote.”

But as the election season draws to a manic close and with the economic crisis ever-present, Benelisha can only wait and prepare to see what January brings, having cast his ballot early.

“I haven't seen it here yet, but I anticipate it,” said Benelisha on the aftereffects of the financial bust.

“But the traditional wisdom about bars is that even in hard times people still want to come out, drink and socialize. I guess we'll see if that still holds true."