Make Them Hear You! The Electoral Process

Make Them Hear You! is a weekly feature on KGNU, produced by Chris Mohr, letting listeners know how they can have their voices heard on issues up before Congress. You can hear it Wednesday mornings at 8.20am during the Morning Magazine.

For the entire month of June, we are devoting our show to our electoral process and what you can do to strengthen it. Each week we will discuss different actions, guided by the principle that every American should be able to cast a ballot easily and securely. This is the time to let your thoughts be known about election fairness, because it takes many months for actions to be put into practice.

So here are two possible actions you can take in this week two.

Action 1: Learn about and Donate to equalvotes.us. Right now, a San Antonio judge is weighing the legality of the current Electoral College process in choosing a president. Plaintiffs dug in to their claims that the winner-take-all method is unconstitutional, discriminatory and leads to the dilution of the minority vote.
A coalition of law firms and the League of United Latin American Citizens filed four federal lawsuits last February in two politically red states, Texas and South Carolina, and two traditionally blue states, California and Massachusetts.

All four lawsuits challenge the constitutionality of the winner-take-all method that states use to allocate their Electoral College votes. The suits against Texas and South Carolina also allege those state’s methods violate the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race or color or against minority groups.

Action 2: We’ve mentioned this before, but The Democracy Restoration Act (H.R. 196/S. 1068), is up before your Senators and representative. People are saying things like, Hi. I’m from [ZIP] and I’m calling to express my concern that people who have served a prison sentence are excluded from electing their own representatives. States vary in their approach to voting rights, leaving millions of Americans, including more than 1 in every 10 African American men, without the right to vote. I would like [my senator or representative] to co-sponsor the Democracy Restoration Act (H.R. 196/S. 1068), which would give returning citizens the right to vote in federal elections. If you are not voting for this, why not?

Remember, it’s important to Invite even people of a different party than you to vote. Voting is a democratic freedom, not a partisan act. You can find out more at americansofconscience.com.

If you have thoughts on any of the legislative ideas presented here, you can contact your Representative and Senators.

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