Dear Friend,

Yesterday, despite urgent warnings from public health experts about the
need to stay home and practice social distancing, conservative judges
ordered Wisconsin to hold an election—and tens of thousands of
Wisconsinites were disenfranchised.

Wisconsin Republicans refused to postpone the election or broaden access
to mail-in voting. The Wisconsin and US Supreme Court sided with them.
In-person voting was a disaster, as many polling places were forced to
close due to a lack of poll workers, and lines to vote in cities like
Milwaukee were hours long.^1 Seniors and others in risk groups were forced
to simply stay home and skip voting.

It was a total disaster, and if we don't act now, it could be a preview of
the November general election. We could see millions of voters being
forced to choose between their health and their civic duty, with polling
places in cities overwhelmed, just like yesterday in Wisconsin.

The only way to ensure that we can hold a free and fair election this
November is if Congress passes a national vote-by-mail law NOW.

[ [link removed] ]Will you donate $5 to help pass a national vote-by-mail
law?

The Wisconsin primary was nothing less than a total breakdown of
democracy.

Once the "safer at home" order was issued, more than 1.3 million
Wisconsinites requested absentee ballots, entirely overwhelming the board
of elections. By the week of the primary, hundreds of thousands of people
hadn't received a ballot, and thousands more couldn't return their ballots
because of coronavirus-related barriers.^2

The Republican legislature blocked the governor’s attempt to postpone the
election until June, and then sued to stop him from extending absentee
ballot deadlines until after voting day. The conservative majority on the
Supreme Court upheld the legislature's suit, literally disenfranchising
hundreds of thousands of people.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people refused to work at the polling sites and
expose themselves to the coronavirus, closing down hundreds of sites. In
Milwaukee, just five of 180 sites remained open, and hours-long lines
discouraged people from voting.^3

[ [link removed] ]We can't have Wisconsin's disenfranchisement be the model of the rest
of the country. Click here to help pass a national vote-by-mail law.

Make no mistake: stopping hundreds of thousands of voters was the plan of
the Wisconsin legislature all along.

Conservatives have long known that higher turnouts mean more progressive
elections, and a widespread vote-by-mail initiative terrifies them.
Vote-by-mail is already highly successful in Washington, Colorado, and
three other states, where turnout is often higher than in the rest of the
country.^4

This week, Georgia mailed absentee ballots to all 7 million registered
voters to help people avoid in-person polling for the primary. The
Republican Speaker of Georgia's House, David Ralston, called the move
"extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia."^5

Donald Trump said that the Republican leadership should "fight very hard"
against mail-in voting, because it "doesn't work out well for
Republicans."^6 But Democratic leaders in Congress aren't doing enough to
make sure that vote-by-mail is available to everyone this fall.

After the current wave of the pandemic ends, scientists are worried about
a second occurrence in late October—just in time to interrupt the general
election.^7 We can't let anti-democracy state legislatures block their
residents from voting—and we CANNOT let Trump use this as an excuse to
undermine a free, fair, and safe election.

We know that vote-by-mail is the best way to guarantee every American's
vote in the election this fall, but we’re facing strong opposition by
Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. More than 80,000 Demand Progress members
have emailed Congress to say that the public wants vote-by-mail, and we're
going to publicly call out any member of Congress who tries to block this
law.

[ [link removed] ]Will you donate $5 to help pass vote-by-mail legislation
to protect our civic rights in November?

Thanks for standing with us.

Robert Cruickshank,
Demand Progress

[ [link removed] ]DONATE

Sources:
1. The New York Times, "Some People Got to Vote Today," [ [link removed] ]April 7, 2020
2. The New York Times, "Wisconsin Primary Recap: Voters Forced to Choose
Between Their Health and Their Civic Duty," [ [link removed] ]April 7, 2020 
3. Ibid.
4. National Conference of State Legislatures, "All-Mail Elections (aka
Vote-By-Mail)," [ [link removed] ]accessed April 8, 2020
5. Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Pressure mounts for further delay of
Georgia’s May primary election," [ [link removed] ]April 2, 2020
6. Politico, "Trump: GOP should fight mail-in voting because it ‘doesn’t
work out well for Republicans’," [ [link removed] ]April 8, 2020
7. Al Jazeera, "'Strike again': US scientist predicts coronavirus return
in fall," [ [link removed] ]April 1, 2020
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