John,

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Congress needs to invest more in our nation’s elections.

But so far, they aren’t getting the message. Last week, the House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee held a markup where they allocated zero dollars in federal funding for critical election infrastructure. Today the full Appropriations Committee held a markup and zeroed out election funding yet again in the budget, emphasizing that their bill “Rejects the request for Election Security grants.”

There are many challenges facing our elections and those who run them — from foreign interference and cybersecurity, to budgetary and safety concerns — and they need our support more than ever. This lack of investment in our elections by the committee is a failure that undermines our democratic foundations. This can’t stand.

Tell your representative to support federal funding for elections!

We at Issue One aren’t the only ones standing up and calling on Congress to do more for election administrators around the country. Recently, nearly 30 former members of Congress, national security experts, and election experts from our bipartisan National Council on Election Integrity called on key Republican and Democratic congressional leaders to appropriate $400 million in election security grants. They were joined in this call for federal election funding by dozens of election officials from Issue One’s bipartisan Faces of Democracy campaign.

We’ve previously asked you to write letters to your elected officials urging them to support increased federal funding for elections. And we’re asking you for your help again to get the message to Congress that they can’t abandon election officials at such a critical time.

Will you write to your representative and urge them to support appropriating funding for elections in the final budget?

Thanks for all you do,

Carah Ong Whaley
Director of Election Protection