To: your secretary of state
Tell your secretary of state: Just say "No!" to Trump's "election observers."
The Trump campaign cannot be permitted to harass and intimidate voters by placing “election observers” at voting sites. This is a blatant attempt to harass voters of color and keep people from exercising their right to vote. Our country has come too far to allow Trump to return us to Jim Crow era voter harassment.
Why is this important?
Last week, Donald Trump put out a call on his website for "election observers" to keep Hillary Clinton from "rigging" the election.
This focus on trumped up spectres of election fraud as a tool for intimidating voters is nothing new for the Republican Party. During the 1970s and 1980s, after people of color in low-income neighborhood were harassed and intimidated at the polls, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was barred from a practice called “voter caging”—challenging voters’ eligibility to cast ballots at their voting site.
And now, Trump's “election observers” could be the next wave of voter intimidation based on bogus charges of voter fraud.
The Brennan Center’s ongoing examination of voter fraud claims have found that “voter fraud is very rare” and “voter impersonation is nearly non-existent.”
What is not rare, however, is our country’s legal history of blocking people from voting. The Fifteenth Amendment and the Nineteenth Amendment—which gave people of color and women the rights to vote, respectively—were ratified after years of campaigning, organizing, and sacrifice. Jim Crow laws kept Black Americans from voting until the civil rights movement fought for and secured the passage of the Voting Rights Action, signed into law in 1965.
We cannot allow Trump supporters to harass voters—our country has come too far to be pulled backward.
This focus on trumped up spectres of election fraud as a tool for intimidating voters is nothing new for the Republican Party. During the 1970s and 1980s, after people of color in low-income neighborhood were harassed and intimidated at the polls, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was barred from a practice called “voter caging”—challenging voters’ eligibility to cast ballots at their voting site.
And now, Trump's “election observers” could be the next wave of voter intimidation based on bogus charges of voter fraud.
The Brennan Center’s ongoing examination of voter fraud claims have found that “voter fraud is very rare” and “voter impersonation is nearly non-existent.”
What is not rare, however, is our country’s legal history of blocking people from voting. The Fifteenth Amendment and the Nineteenth Amendment—which gave people of color and women the rights to vote, respectively—were ratified after years of campaigning, organizing, and sacrifice. Jim Crow laws kept Black Americans from voting until the civil rights movement fought for and secured the passage of the Voting Rights Action, signed into law in 1965.
We cannot allow Trump supporters to harass voters—our country has come too far to be pulled backward.