Celebrate National Voter Registration Day!

Happy Tuesday, Activists!

42 DAYS UNTIL THE ELECTION

It's National Voter Registration Day! 

It really is, but honestly, it’s kind of a made-up holiday? But if it reminds people to register to vote, then it’s done its job.  What can you do to celebrate?

(1) Make sure you are registered to vote! Do that here.

(2) Make sure everyone you know is registered to vote!  Simply send them to VOTESPA.com to do that.

(3) Put that registration to work and make your plan to vote on November 3rd. 

Also FYI, we have had two successful voter registration campaigns. First, we wrote 44,550 postcards to Philadelphia addresses to ask the people living there to register and sign up for VBM. We also currently have signs, online instructions and paper applications for registering to vote and signing up to vote by mail in 27 apartment buildings around the city. We know already that people are using the materials and online information to register!

DEBATE WATCH PARTY

It’s almost here – the first of the Presidential debates. Want to watch it with friends? We think it will help to alleviate the tension and anxiety by being around other like-minded political geeks even if it’s just on Zoom.

Tuesday, September 29, 9:00 – 10:30 p.m.  Sign up here.

We’ll open the Zoom meeting at 8:30 so we can get our predictions and beverage options out on the table! 

AUTHOR EVENT

Last week was a tough one (again!) and we’ll have tougher weeks ahead. But we want to take a quick break for a fun event that’s on topic and interesting in an election year. If you think voting is confusing today, turns out it’s nothing compared to how crazy things used to be! Hear the story of the noble but often flawed process at the heart of our democracy – the story of what ballots and our democracy looked like over time.

Join us for a presentation by Alicia Cheng, author of This Is What Democracy Looked Like, the first illustrated history of printed ballot design. We’re partnering with The Head & The Hand Books to present this compelling story.

Thursday, October 1, 7:00 p.m.

Sign up here. This will be the second half of our Cards & Cocktails event that night. 

Support local booksellers! Buy your copy of This Is What Democracy Looked Like in advance from The Head & The Hand Books. 

HONOR RBG – MAKE CALLS + SEND EMAILS

We have to block everything Republicans try to do to get their Supreme Court nomination confirmed, first by making calls and sending emails to our Senators and then taking other actions.  Here is the list:  

1. You did it yesterday and Toomey’s voicemails were filled up! Call and email again today. Below are all of his offices so if one voicemail is full, try another one!  

Sen. Toomey – Phila office 215-241-1090; D.C. office 202-224-4254; Allentown 610-434-1444; Erie 814-453-3010; Harrisburg 717-782-3951; Johnstown 814-266-5970; Pittsburgh 412-803-3501; Wilkes-Barre 570-820-4088;  email link

Sen. Casey – Phila office 215-405-9660; D.C. office 202-224-6324; email link

Demand our Senators REFUSE to consider any Supreme Court Justice until the new president is inaugurated. Tell Senator Toomey that you demand he live up to his statement on February 15, 2016, quoted in yesterday's newsletter at this link.  Tell Senator Casey that you want to see him stay strong and condemn the Republicans’ hypocrisy and attempt to fill this seat when voters are already voting.

2.  We are planning an action outside Toomey’s office for THIS FRIDAY.  More details to coming in a day or two, but mark your calendars.  We’ll have a schedule of other actions coming out in a day or so.

3.  On Saturday you can make phone calls into KY and CO (depending on the time.) Sign up for a shift here.  These are all on Indivisible’s automated dialer system.  You will also see that Indivisible is calling into PA on Sunday too!

4.  You can sign up for our Emergency Call (Date and Time TBD depending on when Trump announces his Supreme Court nominee.) If you sign up you‘ll get an email as soon as we know when Indivisible is hosting the call.

VOTE BY MAIL UPDATE

Some good legal news.

Last Thursday the PA Supreme Court ruled on cases regarding our ballots and vote by mail rules. You can read about it at this link, but the important points in the decisions are:

1.  Green Party candidates will not be on the ballot. This helps Biden.

2.  The deadline for the election boards to receive mail-in ballots is extended until 5:00 p.m. on the Friday after the election (November 6) as long as the ballots were either postmarked by November 3 or there is no evidence to suggest they were sent after Election Day.

3.  Boards of Election can use drop boxes for mail-in ballots.

4.  Poll watchers must be registered to vote in the county where they are observing the polls. 

5.  People cannot deliver other peoples’ mail-in or absentee ballots. 

Last Friday the Philadelphia Commissioners’ office announced it is proposing satellite office locations for the elections.  You can find the 7 approved locations on our Philly Vote-by-Mail FAQ page.

According to the Commissioners’ office, the satellite offices will be open – 

• 7 days a week;

• From September 29th through Election Day; and 

• Monday – Thursday 11:30 am to 6:30 pm, and Friday – Sunday 9:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Ballots – The Commissioners’ office told us today that we can expect to receive our ballots at about the end of the month.

SPONSOR 1,000 VOTERS!

We announced our fabulous new GOTV postcards on Saturday (see below!).  In just three days we’ve gotten orders from our volunteers for over 46,000 postcards!  We’ve ordered 120,000 of these gorgeous cards, so sign up now for yours at this link. 

Because of the enthusiasm and hard work of our postcard writers, this project has been so much more successful than we ever dreamed possible. But it comes with a big cost and our budget doesn’t keep up. We just ordered another 120,000 of our special GOTV postcards (see below).

So many of you are working like crazy writing postcards. If you are unable to write cards with us, please consider making a contribution to the cause. A $35.00 donation will help us send postcards to 1,000 voters! Maybe you can sponsor 2,000 voters? Many of you have already donated and we thank you! Donate here.

OUR PLAN UNTIL ELECTION DAY

Postcards –

We’ve mailed and delivered the last of the Vote By Mail postcards. If you are writing them, please mail them by September 30. 

Our next step is our Get Out The Vote (GOTV) postcards. GOTV postcards are super important because they are delivered to voters right before Election Day. Sign up here to write these cards.

We will be writing again to many of the same voters we wrote to for VBM, but who did not sign up to vote by mail. Our splashy new cards are going to infrequent voters, who voted in either 2008 or 2012, but not in 2016.

Phone banking – 

We are phone banking to these very same voters! This is exciting, because we will be reaching out to these infrequent voters THREE times (VBM, GOTV, phone banking)! It takes a fair amount of convincing for people who just don’t think of voting the way we all do. Each time we will remind them of the stakes in this election.

Phone bank with us – 

Sign up here for Fridays at 4:00 pm. Sign up here for Tuesdays at 6:00 pm.

Literature drops – 

We will be leaving Biden/Harris literature at Philadelphia doors starting in the couple of weeks. We won’t be canvassing due to safety reasons, but we will be leaving literature at doors. We’ll let you know the details and how to sign up soon.

INTRODUCING OUR NEW GOTV POSTCARD

We are excited to introduce our new GOTV postcard! This special card was created by Brooklyn-based artist Mike Perry, an Emmy Award-winning artist who created all the animations for the TV show Broad City on Comedy Central. Be amazed at the breadth of his fabulous and inspiring work on his website here and read about his Philadelphia connection on his Wikipedia page here.  And of course read more on our web page devoted to our postcard artists here. 

NOTE: We are having 12" x 18" posters made of this postcard!  ou can donate $20 and receive this memento of this huge campaign and help us pay for the cards. If you live where we hand deliver your postcards, donate $20 here and then email us here and tell us you want a poster. If you live where we are shipping your cards to you, please donate $30 to cover packaging and shipping costs.

Here's how to sign up to write our gorgeous new GOTV postcards:

1.  Sign up for these cards by emailing us at this link.  We will start sending them out to our volunteers by the end of this week.

2.  When you send the email to us give us your first and last name, your mailing address, and how many postcards you want to write, in multiples of 100.

3.  Please write the postcards right away BUT HOLD THEM until the mailing date we give you in the instruction email.  The instruction email will have all the details for mailing them, plus the new script.

4.  Please tell us how many postcards you think you can write over the next four weeks.  We will not be shipping after the third week of October, so for those of you we ship to, please tell us the number you can write up front.  We want to reduce the number of shipments and deliveries we make because time is getting short and we don’t want to lose time with delivery days.  If you have written, for example, 200 postcards in ten days, then ask for 400 postcards. So judge what you’ll go through in four weeks and we’ll send you that many.  Thank you!

5.  Order your stamps NOW at this link or at your local post office.  Because these postcards are timed, we don’t want to wait for postal service delays.

POSTCARD PROGRESS BY THE NUMBERS

Over a quarter million postcards written by just our direct group!!

33,000+ – Weekly average number of addresses we’re sending to our postcard writers.

25 – The number of states outside PA where our writers are located.  Welcome Indiana, Nebraska & Wyoming!!

1,350+ – The number of you wonderful volunteers writing our postcards to Philly voters

207,700 – The number of VBM postcard addresses we’ve sent to our writers so far.

44,550 – The Voter Registration addresses your wonderful writers have wrote postcards to. 

50,000 – The number of our addresses our friends in Ithaca, NY are sending GOTV postcards to.

302,250– That’s our GRAND TOTAL so far!  

HOW WILL YOU HELP US WIN?  SIGN UP BELOW!

Find all of our events at this link.

We’ll be on zoom for all of the events.  Once you sign up we’ll send you all the information.  Pick your dates when you sign up.  See you all soon!

Every Tuesday – Phone Bank for Joe Biden to our postcard voters - 6:00 p.m.  Sign up here.

Every Wednesday – Cards & Coffee – 11:00 a.m.

Sign up here.

Every Thursday – Cards & Cocktails – 6:00 p.m.

Sign up here.

Every Friday -- Phone Bank for Biden to our postcard voters – 4:00 p.m. 

Sign up here.

Every Sunday – Postcards Over Brunch a/k/a Office Hours– 12:00 noon. Sign up here.

COMING UP – Literature drops at Philadelphia doors.  Dates and times coming soon.