Friend,

So much of what we’re fighting for -- from healthcare, to education, to housing, to fighting the climate crisis -- requires big, structural democracy reform. If Congress isn’t responsive to the people it is supposed to serve and is not accountable to those who put them in office, then we will not be able to make the progress we so badly need in this country.

But for years, Republicans in Congress and at the Texas legislature have waged a war against voting rights -- cutting back on early voting, arbitrarily throwing people off of state voter rolls, passing voter ID laws designed to make it harder for people of color to vote, and instituting extreme racial gerrymandering in as many states as possible.

All of this got worse in 2013, when the Supreme Court gutted key portions of the Voting Rights Act. This severely limited Congress' ability to intervene when former Confederate states like Texas engage in blatant discrimination and intentional disenfranchisement.

On Friday, the House took a step towards righting these wrongs by passing a bill that Julie supports called the Voting Rights Advancement Act -- it restores the Voting Rights Act and that will allow us to deliver on the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870, which states that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Representative John Lewis, one of Julie’s personal heroes and who became known as the “conscience of Congress,” called it “one of the most vital tools of our democracy.”

Roger Williams shamefully voted against it. To fix our system, we need big structural democracy reform. That means that politicians like Roger Williams who do not honor the Constitution have to go.

Our grassroots campaign is fully funded by the people, not PACs. Please donate so we can finish the quarter strong and enter 2020 with the resources needed to beat Williams.

Ever since Jim Crow -- and indeed, ever since Reconstruction -- Texas has severely restricted the right to vote. Those restrictions have explicitly targeted Black and Latino communities. Poll taxes, literacy requirements, and grandfather clauses, voter ID laws, extreme racial gerrymandering, and laws that today make it hard to vote and hard to register to vote -- all were designed to keep Black people, Latinos, and poor whites from having an equal say in our democracy. When those failed, armed vigilantes would resort to violence, often with the blessing of local authorities. Decades later, voting rights and democracy itself in America have once again entered an age of accelerated voter suppression and restrictive voting laws.

It's time to fight back. We need Same Day and Automatic Voter Registration to reach our democracy’s full potential. We need to restore the enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act, end the partisan and racial gerrymandering that allows politicians to cheat the American people out of democratic representation, get the corrupting influence of big money out of our politics, and enshrine the right to vote in America once and for all.

But the first step is electing voting rights champions to office -- and defeating the status quo politicians who've allowed suppression to continue. So I need you with me.

Donate what you can here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/julie_dec19_em

Ready for the fight,

Team Julie

Contribute

If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe.