VOTE early
There are two kinds of people who aren’t voting early.
1) Your state doesn’t allow it.
2) You have romantic notions of voting early.
The first, no one can do anything about now. Lobby your lawmakers to implement early voting for the next cycle. But the second? Know this—the single best thing you can do to combat ballot-box vote suppression is to bank that vote early. And trust me, conservatives are doing what they can to create havoc at the ballot box, from Donald Trump, to the Republican Party, to crazy Oathkeepers, to other crazy deplorables.
In addition, voting early frees up Democratic GOTV efforts to focus on truly low-performing voters (of which you are not one). So even if you live in a precinct with plenty of voting machines and low wait times because everyone around you is white, give our volunteers a break by allowing them to focus on voters that really do need help voting.
And on top of that, it demoralizes Republicans: “How bad has early voting been for GOP in NV? @nv03[Republican] contender @DannyTarkanian tells GOP women's group last night “we're all going down.”
But aside from that, nothing enables GOP suppression efforts more than ballot-box voting. They can limit the number of polling locations and ballot boxes in Democratic-heavy precincts, willfully creating hours-long lines that force too many people away. Suburban precincts don’t have that problem. But our core ones do. And all it takes is a little extra shenanigans—like “poll watchers” “challenging” voters—to slow things down even more, further suppressing our vote. Meanwhile, since you haven’t voted, as you sit in that extra-long line, our GOTV volunteers are chasing you around instead of supporting someone who actually needs help.
If you shun early voting because of the romance of the moment, take a moment to read this great diary: “And I Thought Early Voting Wouldn't Feel As Special...” Voting is special, no matter how or when or why you do it. And what’s even more special is when other people get to vote because of your decision to help out our GOTV efforts, and minimize the impact of ballot-box voter suppression efforts.
Seriously, if you can, vote early.
= new reply since forum marked as read
