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?)

Since my post with the links list was well-received and since our excellent mod tanaqui said that the candidate slates seemed especially helpful,  
I decided to do another round of them. (Again, cut to spare your reading page.) (Also, I'm operating on the assumption that these are helpful not just in the "where do I send my money" kind of way, but in finding out about candidates who might be running in your area or that of people you know, and you can signal-boost or do other things for them as well.)

( The list.... )

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.

Some of you may remember this post that I did for the 2018 US midterm elections. This is the 2020 version. I note that with COVID-19, you’ll probably want to check not just by state but by your local-level election authority for details on your own voting; your local Democratic party may be a good resource as well.

I would estimate that at least half the links from last election had changed when I looked them up, so doing this again for this election was definitely not redundant.

Some notes: compared to last election, many of the websites seem a lot more thorough and well-organized; as a result, and in order to speed up my getting this posted, I didn’t spend a lot of time hunting down specific links to referenda and sample ballots--- not least because with COVID-19, enough of us are probably voting by mail that we’ll have the ballots themselves in hand with time to do our research on any “surprise” items in them.

Last but not least, I’m sure just about anyone on this comm probably knows their own state’s online election resources by heart, but if you’ve got friends and family elsewhere who need help, or (especially) if you’re phonebanking or textbanking to people out of state, having a handy guide to their state’s election material might help. (In this the age of cellphones, it’s totally not unheard of to call someone with an area code assigned to one state and find that they’re in another.)

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Just what it says on the label--- there are over 140 events happening all over the US; you can find out if there's one near you here. (Sorry for the short notice; I only just found out about this myself.)

This article on HuffPo about the harassment that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are receiving gave me an action idea, specifically for those who have Democratic or otherwise-friendly Congresscritters--- especially if any of you are represented by AOC or one of the other new, high-profile Democratic Reps and Senators, especially if they're not of the "straight White dude" persuasion.

Namely, that if you're calling your Congresscritter, that's a minute or so of voicemail or conversation that they and their staff are NOT getting harassing messages from non-constituents, even if you don't have anything to say beyond, "Keep up the good work!". Go ahead and fill up their inboxes and ears with messages of support even if they're general. Again, that's like half a minute that they're not hearing verbal abuse from non-constituents. (Something I've heard going around occasionally is that if you have a Congressperson you agree with there's no point in calling them; this article suggests that at least for some of the Congresspeople, just letting them know you support them is not only good information but gives them a break from what sounds like some pretty awful harassment.)

(Seriously, the first thing I thought reading that was, "Wow, given the kind of vitriol we all know that 'anonymous' men are happy to spew at women--- Gamergate, anyone?--- I'll bet some of those staffers are getting burned out or worse, especially with the staffs of new Congresspeople who are also new to politics in general.")

If you need a more precise talking point, H.R. 1, "For the People", which is the campaign-finance and ethics resolution, and H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, are probably two good ones to support at the moment. (Sample script: "Hi, I'm a constituent of [Congressperson]; my name is [your name], and I'm so glad to be represented by [Congressperson]. Please let them know I support [bill of your choice]!")

Volunteer to help elect Democrats!

BallotReady.org, which lets you research all the races and referenda on the ballot for your location.

Motivote, which sort of "gamifies" the midterm voting process (you sign up at the site and as you complete various actions to prepare to vote, you're entered to win prizes.)

The ACLU is running an initiative to send postcards to registered voters who didn't vote in the last midterm elections, telling them why you're voting and encouraging them to do the same. They send you the blanks, you write in a message about why you're voting, then send the postcards back to the ACLU office with the return label they provide, and they'll send them out to registered voters who didn't come out in 2014. (This is an almost perfect form of "activism while introverted," even if I personally hate handwriting things.)

More details here: Postcards to Get Out the Vote!

Additionally, you can pledge to be an ACLU voter at www.aclu.org/voter, which provides you information on your Congresscritters' records on the ACLU's platform, upcoming elections, and action opportunities.