Never Give Up, Never Surrender

It's National Voter Registration Day! To honor the day, here are a grab-bag of links to sites where you can check your voter registration and/or register to vote:

Change.TurboVote.org

Common Cause

Healthcare Voter

National Voter Registration Day

I Will Vote

Human Rights Campaign

And, yes, I know these all pretty much do the same thing, but this way if one site is down, or if you want to give traffic to a particular organization, or if you're working a voter registration drive with a specific theme or group attached, you can pick the one or ones that work best for your needs. (Mods, do we need a "2024 election" tag?)

VoteRiders--- yes, the name is a shout-out to the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement--- is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to helping people get the documentation they need in order to register to vote and to register to vote. They’re focusing on states with the strictest voter ID laws (their target states are Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin) but they are available to help in all 50 states as needed. (FYI to the mods, we don't seem to have a tag for Arizona yet but I've tagged all the other states on which they're focusing.)

This sounds deceptively simple, but it can be complicated, not least because it’s easy, especially in the states with the strictest voter ID laws, to get caught in a “do-loop”--- you need, for example, a birth certificate to get a valid state ID, but you can’t get the birth certificate without proof of your identity. Basically, VoteRiders volunteers help people break through the do-loop to get whatever proofs of identity they need. Also, thanks to their donors, they are able to pay for some of the fees associated with getting ID and other documentation.

One of the “knock-on” benefits of VoteRiders' work is that even though their primary mission is to help people get registered to vote, this kind of documentation is also necessary for a lot of other aspects of people’s lives, like obtaining employment and housing; the organization often works with shelters and transition services for the formerly incarcerated. I am not sure how closely they work with domestic-violence organizations in general, but the first thing that popped into my mind was all the advice given to people living in unstable or dangerous households (whether due to intimate partner or other family abuse or anything else) to keep copies of all your personal paperwork, such as ID, where the people who are making you unsafe can’t get at them. (On that note, the website VoteRiders volunteers often use to help people obtain birth certificates is VitalChek, which you can use directly if you’re in need--- VoteRiders does a lot of this for people who don’t necessarily have reliable access to the internet or similar issues, but if you’re here reading this, that’s probably less of an issue for you or people you know who might need access to documentation.) (Something else I have learned through VoteRiders is that if your mind works that way at all, it's a very good idea to memorize any of your "stable" ID numbers, like your Social Security number and state driver's license/ID number, because sometimes just having the number even if you don't have the physical card anymore, can help, and at least some states can look up your "old" ID number even if you've moved out of state and come back, and this can speed up the process of obtaining relevant documents.)

VoteRiders does its volunteer training online--- they want you to attend at least two virtual “shadowing” sessions with a volunteer who lets you watch while they help people get documents over the phone. More information about volunteer opportunities is here.

(And that's how I spent my Saturday night. Last post here for tonight, I promise.)

This is by no means an exhaustive or heavily researched list; rather, it’s an assortment of 2022 election-related links I’ve come across in my travels that I thought might be of interest to people here. (I’ve made the choice to leave the links visible rather than doing the “cover link with text” thing so that you can see where you’re going.)( Cut to spare your reading page. )

Like the title says, we have two upcoming opportunities to flip the Senate (okay, it'll be 50/50, but with Vice President Harris as the tiebreaking vote) in the same state! 

Here are the links to the Democratic candidates' campaign sites:

https://electjon.com/ for Jon Ossoff, who ran in Georgia's 6th Congressional district in a special election back 2017, and who is running against Republican David Perdue

and

https://warnockforgeorgia.com/ for the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who got a very early endorsement from none other than former gubernatorial candidate and current voting protection activist (and also our fellow fannish person and a published romance writer) Stacey Abrams and is running against Republican Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed following the resignation of incumbent Johnny Isakson and who is not only married to the president of the New York Stock Exchange (this is the sort of thing that might matter to some subset of swingable Southern voters, as in OMG damnyankee) but appears to have engaged in a spot of insider trading around the whole COVID thing.

Speaking of Stacey Abrams, here the website for her main voting protection organization: https://fairfight.com/; I note that there are links to volunteer both in Georgia and nationally as well as to donate.

rydra_wong has a very useful post for USians about how to respond to things going pear-shaped after the election here at this link..

In case anyone missed it, here is... well, just what it says in the subject line ;) : 538's state by state guide on how to cast your ballot in the upcoming US election. (Edited for more precise wording.)