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As the clock ticks down on the midterm elections, grassroots activists throughout the United States are finding new ways to make a difference.
Reports of stripped voter rolls, flippable electronic voting machines and other ways to steal the election have become commonplace. What were considered “conspiracy theories” in 2000 and 2004 now appear in matter-of-fact reportage in The New York Times and other mainstream media.
Less visible is a groundswell of grassroots citizens working hard to push back against the confusion and apathy that might prevent voters from heading to the polls.
Allen Young works with the Royalston Town Democratic Committee in western Massachusetts. A long-time journalist and gay rights activist, Young has been handwriting postcards to registered Democrats in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and California.
A national group, Postcards to Voters, has recruited more than 20,000 volunteers like Young, sending out an average of 5,000 postcards daily from community gatherings around the country. It supplies address lists, with the cards addressed simply to “Voter.”
“I just use ordinary handwriting,” says Young. “Others decorate their cards.”
The get-togethers, says committee chair Ruth Suyenaga, come with “a relaxing atmosphere of fun” and pizzas donated from the nearby Deja Brew restaurant.
Secure that Massachusetts will go blue, the volunteers bond with candidates in tight races far away. “After writing ten postcards,” says Deborah D’Amico, “I was now totally invested” in a Congressional race in Arizona. Danny O’Connor, running for Congress in central Ohio, is now “My Danny.”
“I’ve knocked on doors and made phone calls over the years,” says Carla Rabinowitz. “But postcards are a lot more fun, and I think more effective. On a door-knocking trip, two-thirds of the people you want to reach are usually not at home, and the rest either don’t want to talk to you or are already planning to go out and vote for your candidate.”
Postcards on the other hand are carefully aimed at voters who are likely to vote for your candidate, she says.
Susie Shannon likes the phones. Based in southern California, the long-time homeless rights activist has helped organize a regular Thursday night phone bank that’s been going since February. Volunteers, she says, range in age from 13 to 70.
As one of the very few Bernie supporters left on the Democratic National Committee, Shannon is focussed on candidates in key Congressional races in California, targeting national Republican heavyweights like Dana Rohrabacher, Devin Nunes and Duncan Hunter.
“These are very tight races that will make a huge difference in the balance of power in Congress,” she says. “Our phone calls could really could help tip the balance.”
Shannon is also working to help elect Kevin deLeon, the former head of the California Assembly now challenging incumbent U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein. California’s unique primary system produced a race with two Democrats, and the party convention endorsed deLeon. So Shannon has been able to support him without fear of handing the seat to a Republican. Polls show deLeon to be trailing, but Shannon is undaunted. “We need someone who will fight for our progressive values in the US Senate,” she says. “Kevin is the hardest-working candidate I have come across and has a tremendous amount of grassroots support.”
In Tucson, voting rights advocate John Brakey has chosen to sue. The retired grandfather has been leading the national charge for new voting machines that produce a digital image. Brakey says they improve on hand-counted paper ballots by providing a computerized count that can be easily verified both electronically and with paper—a huge leap, he says, beyond the chaotic array of obsolete, easily hackable machines now in use across the nation.
A tireless organizer and advocate, Brakey and his group have challenged vote counts in critical races in Arizona, Alabama and Virginia. Today he’s filing suit in Florida to demand a more transparent process in casting and counting the ballots this coming Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Mimi Kennedy of the Progressive Democrats of America is working to restore a late-audit backup process to the balloting in her home state of California. An actor—she starred in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, and now has a major role in the TV Series Mom—Kennedy is a relentless campaigner for voter rights.
Earlier this year the California Assembly eliminated a requirement that absentee and late ballots be audited in a close vote count. "That loophole could allow critical elections to be stolen on county computers that no-one’s checking,” she warns. “We just can’t let it happen.”
Along with thousands of other “Blue Wave” activists, Kennedy, Brakey, Shannon, and Young have committed themselves to raising a grassroots upheaval powerful enough to crumble the Red Wall erected by Trump’s GOP.
Says Young: “This effort is a commitment to the basic democratic process enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It offers a positive alternative to dreadful predictions of civil strife.”