I visited Birmingham County Jail this week to deliver a simple message: you are free to vote, even if you don’t know it. And now is the time for you to claim and exercise this right. I was joined by allies from the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, prominent Birmingham lawyers and our County Commissioner, Sheila Tyson. All are veterans of voter registration drives, but this was their first time registering voters in a jail or prison. I was there to show them how. For 106 years, Alabama lied to those who were convicted of felonies and told them they had lost their right to vote forever. In 2017, after campaigns by my organizations, The Ordinary Peoples Society (TOPS) and Prodigal Child Project, Alabama restored the right to vote for more than a quarter million people - including many who are still behind bars. But nearly all of those who now have their right to vote restored still don’t know they have this right. That’s why we’re doubling down on our efforts to go in and register voters inside prisons and jails, and also on the outside. Our goal is to reach at least half of Alabama’s newly eligible voters by going in to every one of our hundreds of state, city and county jails and prisons. To reach them all, we’ll need all the help we can get. So we’ve formed a coalition called Alabama RACE (Restoring Alabama's Civic Engagement) alongside leading voting rights organizations in our state, including the League of Women Voter, NAACP, Hometown Action, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Alabama Black Womens' Roundtable, and are training volunteers to register incarcerated voters, as well as inmates, so they can register their peers on the inside, as is their right. We all know how much is at stake for our nation in 2020. Voting is a sacred right that we fought for you to have, and now we’ll fight for you to use it.
In 2020, we can take back our country for the values we all share - solidarity, justice, and a fair economy - state by state, seat by seat, and vote by vote. But we can only do this with your help. Give now to support People's Action at this critical time.
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