Friend,

Everyone deserves to have a voice in our democracy and a say in who represents them. I’ve watched with growing alarm as threats against voting have proliferated across the country. Far too many of our elected officials think they get to pick and choose who will elect them.

The right to vote is a fundamental pillar of American democracy. It’s how we advocate for ourselves and how we make sure our lawmakers are working for the people, not for special interests with dark money. Bad faith actors are trying to make voting harder because they think the right to vote is expendable. They have attacked our voting rights and election security in 48 states, passing damaging new laws in 18. That’s why so many people—from pastors and civil rights activists, to Democratic state legislators from Texas, to students and seniors, to people like you—are taking drastic measures at huge personal cost to protect our right to vote no matter the consequences. It’s why we're partnering with the NAACP, the ACLU and others to directly engage our communities in this critical work to secure our right to vote before the 2022 elections, strengthening voting infrastructure and fighting back against voter suppression and disenfranchisement.

It's clear: We need reinforcements. We need you to keep contacting your senators every single day to tell them they must protect our right to vote against these state-based attacks. There is no time to waste.

Fifty-six years ago today, when President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act, he declared before a joint session of Congress, “It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote.” And those words have never been truer. Voting rights are being eroded throughout the country. In Arizona, where Joe Biden won by more than 10,000 votes, Republicans in that state’s Legislature are working to enact two dozen separate measures to make it harder for some residents to vote. One Arizona legislator behind these voter suppression efforts blatantly declared that “everybody shouldn’t be voting” and that “we have to look at the quality of votes.” A recently enacted Georgia law attacks “souls to the polls,” the tradition in which Black voters cast their ballots after church on Sundays. Another made it a crime to give food or water to people waiting to vote.

The right to vote is as sacred as it is essential. It is critical to our freedom to thrive, no matter our race, ethnicity or income. That is why we need national voting rights legislation, and we need it now. Call your senators and urge them to act now!

Our responsibility as citizens is not just to vote; it is to stand up so that everyone who is eligible can vote and every vote is counted. Protecting our democratic principles is patriotic, not partisan.

In unity,

Randi Weingarten

AFT president