Voter disenfranchisement is a common tactic for Republican officials, and it almost always targets communities of color. But we are not powerless to stop it. These are the races where we can make the most difference to disrupt voter suppression efforts this year and increase voter access in the years ahead:
- Georgia: Democrat Stacey Abrams could be the first black woman elected governor in the United States. She is running neck-and-neck with Republican Brian Kemp, who—as Georgia's secretary of state—is officially overseeing his own gubernatorial election. Kemp recently used his power as secretary of state to put 53,000 voter registrations "on hold." Over 90 percent of these were from people of color. Abrams has registered thousands of new voters in her groundbreaking campaign and needs our help to Get Out The Vote on Election Day.
- North Dakota: A strict new voter ID law passed by the Republican legislature requires documentation of a residential address, but Native Americans living on reservations often don't have residential addresses because the postal service doesn't deliver mail to them. They use P.O. boxes, but P.O. boxes were deliberately decreed to be invalid for the purposes of voter ID under the new law. North Dakota Native Vote is an organization working with local tribes to provide free, updated identification cards or address verification documents to tribal citizens.
- Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio: These are all swing states where Republican secretaries of state have used their powers to restrict voter access—purging voter rolls, reducing or eliminating early voting hours, opposing same-day voter registration, and more. Democratic secretaries of state can undo this damage and increase voter access in the years ahead. Daily Kos has endorsed Democrats in each of these six states.
- Michigan: Proposition 3, sponsored by Promote the Vote, could dramatically expand voter access by establishing automatic voter registration, extending the voter registration deadline, and establishing no-excuse absentee voting. This could immediately transform Michigan from one of the hardest states to vote in to one of the easiest.
Please chip in $1 to each of these 10 campaigns today.