Today, we are launching the 2022 Democracy From The Ground Up campaign to increase voter participation across Texas ahead of the midterm election. In order for our democracy to work, we need to ensure that all eligible voters are able to cast a ballot. In order to achieve this, the systems in place must proactively assist voters every step of the way, from registration to casting a ballot. This is where Democracy from the Ground Up comes in.
Democracy From The Ground Up is an advocacy campaign we execute in coalition with our partners Common Cause Texas, MOVE Texas, and Texas Freedom Network. Since its inception in 2019, Democracy From The Ground Up has made major strides in enacting a number of pro-voter policies in several counties across Texas. Past victories of the campaign include; mailing postage-paid vote-by-mail applications to all voters over the age of 65, recruiting high school and college students to participate in local Student Poll Worker Programs, verifying that all polling locations in the County comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, along with many other tactics. In 2019 and 2020, the campaign successfully implemented over 10 reforms in 12 different counties that comprised over 50% of the state’s population.
Through this strategic campaign, we work with local election officials to enact reforms that increase voter participation in Texas, a state that is notorious for low voter turnout. This year, our goal is to implement 15 pro-voter reforms in 15 different counties across the state of Texas that together comprise over 60% of Texas’ population. These reforms include: 1) establishing a minimum wage of $17/hour for poll workers, 2) establishing polling places on college campuses with more than 8,000 students, and 3) ensuring that counties promote the availability of curbside voting for people with disabilities.
This year, Texans are facing additional barriers that put the equity, accessibility, and safety of our elections at risk. Texas is the hardest state to vote in, and our state leaders have done nothing to remedy this. Instead, they actively promoted legislation that complicated the voting process further, and led to several Texans having their ballots rejected for simple clerical errors. We aim to work side by side with local pro-voting officials to fight back and enact reforms that make voting safe and accessible for all Texas voters.
Our Democracy from the Ground Up campaign has a clear track record of implementing pro-voter reforms across Texas. Our votes have power. That’s why anti-voter politicians like Greg Abott, and state legislators are trying so hard to take away our freedom to vote. In order to protect and expand the right to vote, we need to build our democracy from the ground up. That means starting at the local level and enacting change that will directly assist voters.
Sign up here to get involved in our work to build our democracy from the ground up!
Further reading: