How Washingtonians can advocate for Vote By Mail across the country

“For 2020, the first thing is to eliminate barriers to voting” — State Senator Sam Hunt

Ensuring alternatives to in-person voting, so that nothing will put the November presidential election at risk, is one of Indivisible’s top priorities. How best to leverage our first-hand experience with voting by mail in Washington?

“Reach out to everybody you know in states that don’t have vote by mail” — Kathy Sakahara, League of Women Voters of WA

These suggestions came from the Vote by Mail Advocacy and Activism webinar we did last week. There was a lot of other great stuff in the webinar from both presenters. It’s really worth watching the video or reading the notes for the details. This post focuses on how we can take action.

Here in Washington, we have first-hand experience voting by mail so can speak to how well it works. Especially after this webinar, we also know how to counter the common misunderstandings. If enough of us take Kathy’s advice and start reaching out, we could have a real impact.

There are lots of different ways to reach out — phone, Facebook, WhatsApp, or whatever works for you. Some of the key messages to send:

• Vote by mail works well! One good approach: share why you personally like it. And it’s not just Washington where it works well; the US military’s voted by mail for over a hundred years.
• Vote by mail is secure. Washington has an extremely low rate of voter fraud; so do other vote by mail states like Oregon and Colorado. Matt Barreto of UCLA’s Voting Rights Project has looked at instances of voter fraud for three decades, and says “We found that it’s just not happening in vote by mail.”
• State and local election officials need to start planning now, and Congress needs to allocate $4B in funding, for things to go smoothly in November. Sen. Hunt presented a succinct summary of what’s needed at the state and local level: “expertise and equipment.” States that are trying expand voting by mail between now and November have a lot of work to do, and need help paying for it.
• Voters need to start planning now too. Double-check that you’re registered, plan ahead to request an absentee ballot if you can, know when the deadlines are — and make sure your friends and family know as well. Vote411 has a list of the absentee voting rules in all 50 states (although it hasn’t yet been updated with recent changes).

As Kathy pointed out, it’s important to contact your Republican friends and relatives as well — vote by mail is a non-partisan issue. When you do, it’s worth mentioning that Utah, a red state, has vote by mail, and it hasn’t led to the Democrats taking over. And Washington’s own Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman is a very strong advocate of vote by mail — here’s a good interview with her in the New York Times.

Once people agree with you that voting by mail is valuable, then ask them to take action to help make it happen. Here’s four things they can do:

• Contact their Senators and ask them to include $4B funding to secure our elections and reduce the barriers to voting by mail. The League of Women Voters’s Take Action page makes it easy (although when you’re talking to Democrats, you may want to point them to Indivisble’s page, which asks the Senators to support Elizabeth Warren’s plan).
• If they live in Texas, Indiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, or another state like that requires excuses for absentee voting, contact their state legislators and Secretary of State and ask for “no-excuse absentee voting.”
• If they live in a state like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, of Florida that already has no-excuse absentee voting, contact their their state legislators and Secretary of State and ask them to further reduce barriers to people voting in November.
• No matter where they live, contact their friends and get them to do the same!

It’s important to realize that expanding vote by mail is not the only priority. It’s critical to expand in-person early voting as well. States also need to invest in voter education and good web sites so that voters can request replacement ballots if needed, find out what early voting options are available, and check whether their ballots have been accepted. As Sen. Hunt says, think in terms of “reducing barriers to voting.”

We’re going to focus a lot on voting rights on the ramp to November. Vote by mail’s not a magic bullet — we’ll still need to do lots of voter education and get out the vote work, as well as fighting disinformation. You can find out more about voting rights on sites like Fair Fight, the Brennan Center, and the League of Women Voters’ VOTE 411. And please consider donating to the League and some of the other excellent non-partisan organizations working on voting rights!

Still, right now’s an especially important time for vote by mail activism. States need to act as quickly as possible; Congress needs to make the money available ASAP.

So please, start reaching out!