Happy Sunday! I hope you're doing well. Most of all, I hope you’re not only stressing about the news but also taking action.
If you've been following the news, you've probably heard the
emerging story about president Trump's extortion of the Ukrainian government, using our country's military and economic power to force them help him win re-election in 2020.
At this point, if the Republican party continues to back him and he wins re-election in 2020 in spite of clearly illegal and treasonous behavior, I don't expect our country to survive as a Democracy, with all that entails for our lives. Plus, you know, climate change is a looming disaster that will get a lot worse if we continue to do nothing about it.
So I'm writing today to share a really simple and powerful thing you can do to help ensure he isn't re-elected. You can do it at home with just a few supplies and you can spend as much or as little time as you like on it. It's even something you can enlist your kids to help with.
Basically, it's a personalized voter registration drive you do via the mail, and it is organized on the website
votefwd.org. The website has data on voters that are not registered to vote, but that are statistically very likely to vote Democratic in 2020 once they do register to vote.
Here's what you do:
1) Buy some envelopes and stamps.
2) Pick a voter registration campaign ongoing at
votefwd.org, and pick how many letters you want to send.
3) The website will give you a document that you will download and print. The printed document has a cover letter and pre-filled voter registration form for each person you will send a letter to.
4) You simply hand-address each envelope with each voter's name and address, including an in-state return address that the website provides you, and hand-write one short sentence and your name/initials on each cover letter to help personalize it.
If you would be willing to spend an hour to cast a vote on election day in 2020, please consider spending an hour doing this. This type of personalized voter registration drive has been proven highly effective in experimental studies to increase voter turnout in presidential elections. For every hour you spend preparing and sending these voter registration letters, there will be one more swing-state voter who casts a vote against Trump in 2020.
You will be just one of thousands of people around the country collectively taking part in this campaign. I hope you'll check out the website and join us in sending letters!
p.s. If you would like recommendations on which states to write letters for, I would recommend the following key states that will likely decide the election: Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, and Minnesota.
p.p.s. Feel free to forward this note as an email or posting to anyone you think might be interested in this campaign. Thanks!