Election Day countdown: 213 days
TL;DR (too long; didn’t read)
The take: Our remaining primary and November elections will change voting forever.
What you can do: With your money, give to Stacey Abrams’ FairFight PAC to keep our elections safe and secure; with your time, sign up to join our event, Inside America’s Largest Stimulus with Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-VA) team
What you should know: Primary elections postponed; Americans are afraid of going to the polls; Mail-in ballots are on the rise; 1918 midterms during the Spanish Flu pandemic serve as a warning
Candidate of the Week: Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA)
What we are reading:Game over for election security; Campaigning might never be the same; Democrats’ digital divide; Progressives believe this is their moment; A coronavirus coup; Voting rules war
The take
With only 213 days until votes are counted, there is unparalleled urgency to ensure that states have the resources to make November’s elections safe and secure. Experts agree, the integrity of this election could be at an unprecedented risk. The 2016 elections left a wound. If we don’t act, we may face the same reality in 2020 – this time, permanent and self-inflicted.
The coronavirus stimulus allocated $400 million toward critical election protections, but is short by at least $1.6 billion. This comes after years of increased calls for easy and equitable ballot access. Senators Klobuchar and Wyden recently introduced legislation to help achieve this at a time when it has never been more critical. The integrity of our elections is at stake.
We do not need to postpone our November elections. But, we must address election security now.
What you can do
With your time: Join us as we go Inside America’s Largest Stimulus with the team of Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), a primary negotiator of the package.
With your money: Give the equivalent of a coffee or drink to Fair Fight PAC, the national voting rights organization founded by former Georgia House Minority Leader and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams leading the fight for fair elections in 2020.
What you should know
Primaries postponed:Over a dozen states and territories have postponed their primaries and nearly a half dozen states have adopted mail-in voting only or relaxed their mail-in ballot process. We know people would prefer to vote at home, amid the coronavirus outbreak,with approximately two-thirds saying they would not feel comfortable going to a polling place to vote. Mail-in voting is already on the rise: “In 2016, more than 41 percent of all ballots were cast before Election Day. Of the total turnout, approximately 17 percent of ballots were cast using in-person early voting and nearly 24 percent were cast using by-mail absentee voting.”
Pandemic election: To anticipate the future, we look to the past. The last elections impacted by a pandemic were the 1918 midterms, amid the Spanish Flu, which resulted in a 10 percent dropoff in turnout. We only returned to pre-1918 midterm voter turnout level in 2018 – a full century later.
Candidate of the Week
About the candidate: Freshman Congresswoman Lucy McBath (D) lost her son to gun violence, which led to her career in gun safety activism.
In Congress, she became a cosponsor of the House’s strongest election security legislation.
About her contested election: This is a very high impact race. Rep. McBath flipped her seat by 24 points in 2018, winning by 1 point. She is running in a district whose voters will help win swing state legislature seats, two senate seats, and the state for the presidency.
Learn more on her website. You can donate here. Check out other races you can support here.
What we are reading
Crisis in confidence: “In 2020 or future elections if even one state suffers a major election security breach, that’s likely to cause voters across the country to lose confidence.” (Washington Post)
Going virtual: “‘I’m not sure anybody really knows what a completely virtual and online campaign really looks like and anybody who says they do is lying,’ said Addisu Demissie, a Democratic operative who managed New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s presidential campaign.” (Mother Jones)
Digital divide: “As Mr. Biden closes in on his party’s nomination, that digital mismatch [with Trump] underscores one of the Democrats’ biggest general-election challenges: They are up against a political figure who has marshaled all the forces of the modern web to refract reality and savage his opponents." (New York Times)
Light in the darkness: “Instead of despairing, leading progressives say they are invigorated, and eager to use the coronavirus crisis to convince Biden–and millions of other American–that major reforms are necessary.” (The Atlantic)
Coronavirus coup: "Bolsonaro in Brazil, Kaczynski in Poland ... Trump in the United States, all of them have thought about using emergency powers. But no one has yet gone as far as Orban to really shut down democracy as anybody knew it in Hungary before.” (NPR)
Voting rules war: “Biden spokesman Andrew Bates...said any Trump-led effort ‘to restrict access to voting would … amount to a craven attempt to steal the sacred right of the American people to vote.’” (Politico)
Stay safe,
Zak
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