WANTED: NEW SENATE AND PRESIDENT IN NOVEMBER
ACTION ONE: WORK IN THE ELECTIONS.
Donate to your favorite progressive candidates. Write letters, send postcards and phonebank to get out the vote. Join us and Indivisible National as we target our efforts to 12 battleground states, helped by the amazing Swing Left and Vote Forward team.
- We’re hosting virtual letter writing events every Saturday and every fourth Tuesday – sign up at https://swingleft.org/group/indivisible-oregon
- Write letters to voters from home, whenever it’s convenient for you. Register with Vote Forward to get started at votefwd.org.
- Host your own virtual letter-writing party! Get started here: http://swingleft.org/p/virtual-letter-writing-party
Stay tuned — more activities to come! And remember: action is the best antidote to despair.
ACTION TWO: CALL YOUR SENATORS
SAMPLE SCRIPT FOR WYDEN AND MERKLEY:
My name is [–] and I’m a constituent from [city], Oregon [zip code].
Thank you for sponsoring the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act, and for your tireless efforts to protect our elections. I want you to know that I will work to in the 2020 elections to restore democracy and bring candidates with progressive agendas to the Senate, House and Presidency.
CALL SENATOR MERKLEY
CALL SENATOR WYDEN
ACTION THREE: CALL YOUR HOUSE REP
Not sure who your U.S. Representative is? Find out here.
SAMPLE SCRIPTS FOR REPRESENTATIVES:
My name is [–] and I’m a constituent from [city], Oregon [zip code].
BLUMENAUER, BONAMICI, DEFAZIO and SCHRADER: Please continue to work for legislation to protect our elections, for this election and the ones in the future. I want you to know that I will work to in the 2020 elections to restore democracy and bring candidates with progressive agendas to the Senate, House and Presidency.
WALDEN: The time for your retirement is drawing near. We disagree on nearly everything, but I hope that we can agree on this: that free, fair and transparent elections are the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. As a final act, please work to protect this election, and those in the future.
CALL SUZANNE BONAMICI (OR-01)
CALL GREG WALDEN (OR-02)
CALL BLUMENAUER (OR-03)
CALL PETER DEFAZIO (OR-04)
CALL KURT SCHRADER (OR-05)
BACKGROUND:
For the third time, a Presidential candidate could lose the popular vote but still win in the electoral college. Trump only needs to a few battleground states to go his way.
Don’t count on a numerical majority. Republicans have been perfecting the arts of suppressing votes, purging voter rolls, gerrymandering districts and for years.
Don’t count on fundraising. Democrats are $187 million behind.
Don’t count on discernment among voters. Despite everything, half or nearly half of Americans in four battleground states (Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona) recently approved of how Trump is handing the pandemic.
As for the pandemic, it’s a wild card. States have a lot of power to decide how run elections. Republicans control 30 state legislatures, Democrats only 19. (One state is divided.)
Sen. Wyden recently introduced the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020 to ensure the integrity of this year’s election. But time is running out. So yes, call our Members of Congress and tell them we still want Congress to protect the elections. They need our support. But also, they need to hear that you are will put your shoulder to the wheel to flip the Senate and win back the Presidency.
SOURCES:
Op Ed on the Electoral college: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/13/electoral-college-is-ticking-time-bomb-november/
Dem/Rep state scorecard: https://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/partisan-composition.aspx
Polls on Pandemic leadership (see paragraph on four swing states): https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-are-largely-unimpressed-with-trumps-handling-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic/
How Trump could win: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-election/608989/
