Protect the Vote

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FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | April 9, 2020freadshot

“No voter in America should have to risk their life in order to cast their vote. “

The despicable actions taken by Republican Wisconsin officeholders forced Wisconsin voters this week to make a terrible choice: either risk your life to vote in person or forfeit your sacred right to vote. Some courageous voters took the risk. Others were not able to and had to forfeit their votes. Then there was the nurse who reportedly worked all day, took the risk to vote and nevertheless was denied the ability to vote because she showed up 3 minutes late at the polling place.

The Wisconsin fiasco is a forerunner for the battles that lie ahead.

President Trump has made clear that central to his reelection effort is making it as hard as possible for eligible voters to vote. Trump recently attacked voting by mail as “corrupt” and called for every person to vote in person at the voting booth and have voter ID.

Trump somehow neglected to mention that he himself, “corruptly” in his own words, voted absentee by mail in New York in 2018 and that he and his wife have applied to vote absentee by mail this year in Florida. What is good enough for President Trump must be good enough for every other voter in our country.

Maximizing the difficulty of voting is Republican party gospel for the 2020 elections, with Trump in the lead, and his agent in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, playing his usual destructive role.

This makes it all the more important to win the battle that Democracy 21 and many other groups are fighting to have Congress quickly send as much as $4 billion to the states to use to run safe and secure elections.

States desperately need these funds to protect voters and to ensure the integrity of the unprecedented election we are facing in November.

A major congressional battle lies ahead in the coming weeks over including in the next big relief package up to $4 billion necessary for the states to run their elections. In the end, this will come down to a showdown between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Trump. This fight to protect voters and ensure honest elections must be won.

No voter in America should have to risk their life in order to cast their vote.

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