Here’s a Halloween scare for you: what if they held an election, and no one came?
Whether or not you believe in ghosts or zombies, you can’t argue that the horrors of voter suppression are very real. And considering that voter turnout is historically lower in a mid-term election year, we are in a very terrifying place as a representative democracy.
To build a strong, diverse electorate, we have to do the work to empower, inform, and motivate youth and people of color to vote again in 2014.
Across the country, there have been more tricks than treats for the American voter lately. Officials are trotting out the boogeyman of “voter fraud,” and we unmask it only to find the real threat is voter suppression.
With the recent cut to early voting in Ohio, the work we’re doing on the ground there to get out the vote has become that much more important.
The Supreme Court stopped a lower court decision to cut two parts of North Carolina’s voter suppression law, eliminating same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting, which will especially affect voters of color.
The situation in Texas is particularly precarious. With the state’s new voter ID law standing to potentially disenfranchise 600,000 of its citizens – mostly black and Latino – the need for this work couldn’t be more apparent.
And a new report released yesterday revealed that election officials in 27 states have initiated a program that could potentially purge millions – particularly black, Latino, and Asian American voters – from the voter rolls. With the races in many battleground states so close they’ll come down to a few thousand votes, the effect of blocking even a small number of those voters is monumental.
That’s why Project Vote is running a cost-effective, data-driven, multi-state Get Out the Vote program. We are on the ground in New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – making calls, and going door-to-door – to increase voting among historically underrepresented citizens.
To make sure the polls aren’t haunted by the specter of voter suppression.