Happy Wednesday, Activists!
Last night’s debate was, well, demoralizing on a lot of fronts. It’s going to be a rough ride from here on out. Our job as citizens right now is to get the vote out, and that’s what we’re doing. After all, we can’t control the maelstrom any better than Chris Wallace did.
But we have an encouraging and inspiring story from our hard-working postcard team!
As many of you know, we ship tens of thousands of postcards all over the country to our wonderful volunteers, who write and mail them to help Philadelphia carry PA to a Blue victory. We’re lucky to have a dynamic duo, Ann and Bruce, who pack and ship all of these postcards every day from their home in Northern Liberties.
The other day Bruce took a huge box of postcard packages to the local post office. The clerk asked what the heck was in all those packages. Bruce’s reply: “These are all postcards to Get Out The Vote in Philadelphia.” At that, one person in the long line of customers started clapping, slowly at first. And then faster. And then all of the customers in line were clapping in unison, louder and louder. True story.
We always knew Bruce was a rock star but after that he’s getting a little cocky, to be honest.
Do not get dispirited from all the noise. Our communities are with us in this fight to reclaim our democracy. They are rooting for our success. So let’s get to work!
CALL TO ACTION
Check out the rest of the schedule for the PA Statewide #TellToomey Week of Action at this link. Have some fun!
Today:
Make calls to Toomey’s office. If one office voicemail is full, try another one.
Here are the office phone numbers:
Philadelphia 215-241-1090
D.C. 202-224-4254
Allentown 610-434-1444
Erie 814-453-3010
Harrisburg 717-782-3951
Johnstown 814-266-5970
Pittsburgh 412-803-3501
Scranton/Wilkes-Barre 570-820-4088
Here’s the sample script:
I demand that Senator Toomey REFUSE to consider any Supreme Court Justice until the new president is inaugurated. As Senator Toomey said about appointing a Supreme Court justice in 2016: “With the presidential election fewer than 8 months away, it is wise to give the American people a more direct voice in the selection and confirmation of the next justice.” Do the right thing and let the American people use their voice.
Last week we held a rally to honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life and legacy, and to raise a voice to tell Senator Toomey he must wait until after the inauguration to consider her successor. It was a good day and here’s a snapshot.
AUTHOR EVENT TOMORROW, October 1, at 7:00 p.m.
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 story.
Sign up here. This will be during 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.
After Alicia’s presentation, we’ll talk about how to be sure your vote counts, questions on voting by mail, and what to expect at the polls on election day.
VOTING UPDATE
Ballots are going out to voters now! If you haven’t received your ballot yet, you should soon. If you don’t receive your ballot by October 6 you can go to one of the satellite election offices and they’ll print one for you right there.
Mail-in Ballot Update:
The Philly Commissioners published these materials for November’s election.
Mail-In Ballot Guide. It’s available in several languages.
A partial list of polling places for the November election. There are over 400 locations listed and the list will be updated every week, with the final list to be published 20 days before the election. Billy Penn has mapped them all out.
Here is the list of satellite offices opened so far. The election board is in the process of getting the staffing to open the other ten offices. More soon.
The satellite offices will be open –
7 days a week;
From now through Election Day; and
Monday – Thursday 11:30 am to 6:30 pm, and Friday – Sunday 9:30 am to 4:30 pm.
Check your VBM or ballot status at this link.
Here's an easy explainer for voting by mail --
OPPORTUNITIES TO PROTECT THE VOTE
1. Early Voting Help – “Vote-Early Monitor” for the PA Dems.
The PA Dems need your help to ensure Pennsylvania’s first round of voting early in person runs as smoothly as possible. You can sign up here for training to be a vote-early monitor!
The training is this Sunday, October 4, at 5:00 PM
You'll be the campaign’s eyes and ears on the ground: observing how the process runs, educating voters, and reporting to the Voter Protection Team in real time.
2. Election Day – Polling Place or Social Media Monitor for the ACLU
The ACLU has two opportunities for Election Day as part of its Election Protection program. They are looking for volunteers to:
--> Monitor polling places (you don’t need to be a lawyer); or
--> Monitor social media for problems.
3. Election Day – For legal professionals – Voter Protection Opportunities with the Biden Campaign:
Are you a legal professional? Help the Biden campaign on Election Day as an in-person poll observer, virtual hotline operator, or other voter protection volunteer.
Sign up here. The Biden team will follow up with you with opportunities to also work remotely. Training will be provided.
4. Election Day – Be a (1) Poll Observer; or a (2) Canvass Observer (to protect mail-in vote counting) for the Biden Campaign. Go to JoeBiden.com/ProtectPolls to or call 833-PA-VOTES.
REACH OUT TO A VOTER – HERE’S HOW
We’ll be on zoom for all of the events. Once you sign up we’ll send you all the information.
PHONE BANKING–
Call a Philly voter you already wrote postcards to! Sign up and you might just call someone who received a card you wrote!
EVERY TUESDAY 6:00 pm
Phone Bank for Joe Biden
NEW – EVERY WEDNESDAY (starting 10/8) 6:00 pm
Phone Bank for Joe Boden
EVERY FRIDAY 4:00 pm
Phone Bank for Joe Biden
POSTCARDS –
If you aren’t already writing postcards with us sign up here first to order your postcards for the event.
EVERY WEDNESDAY 11:00 am
Cards & Coffee
EVERY THURSDAY 6:00 pm
Cards & Cocktails
EVERY SUNDAY 12:00 Noon
Postcards Over Brunch a/k/a Office Hours
NEW – LITERATURE DROP FOR JOE BIDEN
Saturday October 10 - 12:00 Noon
We’ll go door to door just dropping off literature in the doors of Philadelphia Democrats to get them out to vote.
We’ll be doing this every weekend until the election. More dates coming soon!
POSTCARD PROJECT UPDATE
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.
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 three weeks. We will not be shipping after the middle of October. 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.
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.
WE HAVE POSTERS!
Get a memento of this huge project and your role in it! You will want a 12”x18” poster of our GOTV postcard. They’re gorgeous! You can see the card here.
We’ll either deliver the poster to you, or if we ship, we’ll send it separately from your postcards. Just donate $20 and receive a memento of this huge campaign as our gift. If we have to ship the poster to you, please donate $30 to cover packaging and shipping costs. Donate $20 (or $30) here and then email us here and tell us you want a poster.
SPONSOR 1,000 VOTERS!
We’re moving fast through our latest batch of 140,000 postcards (yes, we bought an extra 20,000 of them!). Because of your enthusiasm and hard work, this project has been so much more successful than we ever dreamed possible but it doesn’t come without a big cost and our budget doesn’t keep up.
So many of you are working like crazy writing postcards. If your schedule doesn’t permit you to write cards with us, please consider making a contribution to the cause. Just a $35.00 donation will help us send postcards to 1,000 voters! Many of you have already donated and we thank you!
Here is our progress to date by the numbers:
35,500+ – Weekly average number of addresses we’re sending to our postcard writers.
1,295 – The number of our volunteers writing postcards.
235,500 – The VBM + GOTV addresses we’ve sent to our fabulous writers so far.
44,550 – The Voter Registration addresses we sent to our wonderful writers.
50,000 – The number of GOTV addresses we sent as part of our project to a group in Ithaca, NY.
330,050 – Our GRAND TOTAL so far!
31 – States other than Pennsylvania with volunteers writing our postcards. You can see a lot of them in our recent newsletter here. We just added Texas, Rhode Island, North Dakota, Indiana, and Wyoming. Welcome!
Be kind. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Keep a distance.