Tell your Senators and President Biden: There's a Deadline for Democracy: Pass the Freedom to Vote Act

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Call Script

My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.

To Senator Feinstein: You issued a strong statement in support of the For the People Act in June. Please co-sponsor S.2747, the Freedom to Vote Act, introduced on September 14, 2021. The Senate courteously gave Team Manchin time to craft their bill and it deserves to be passed now. He knows, as well as you do, that Republican vigilante violence nationwide makes it imperative that you create a filibuster exemption to protect our voting rights.

To Senator Padilla: Please work with your senate colleagues in asking Senator Manchin to acknowledge that the gravity of vigilante violence against election officials nationwide by proponents of The Big Lie, which continues to get worse, is far more dangerous than creating a filibuster exemption for voting rights.

To President Biden: You gave a strong, comprehensive address to the nation in defense of voting rights on July 13, 2021. Yet the threats and intimidation of election officials have continued so that in September the FBI task force had to ramp up its activities.The continued violence makes it imperative that a filibuster exemption be made for voting rights. Please use your bully pulpit and private pressure to get that done now. (As you know, the power of mob violence is being extended to include attacks on school boards for keeping children safe and teaching history.)

Background

This summer, Indivisible National and seventy other progressive groups launched a Deadline for Democracy campaign, focused on outreach to Congress during the summer recess, in favor of passing the For the People Act. We demonstrated, and we wrote and called our Members of Congress to urge them to take action to protect our voting rights. We like the focus of that campaign and know that we are still on a tight Deadline for Democracy:

Members of Congress who supported the attempted coup on January 6, 2021, remain in their seats. Some have made statements, in Congress, likening the violent mob attack on our Capitol to tourist visits and continue to minimize its gravity.
More information emerges daily about the advance planning of the insurrection, including a memo from one of the former president’s lawyers, John Eastman, describing a six-point plan to overturn the election, entitled “Jan 6 scenario.”
Supporters of the former president continue attacking and threatening election officials and pressing for unprofessional audits, even in states the former president won, to foster a general distrust of election results. Many proponents of the lie that President Biden did not win in 2020 are running for election to be secretaries of state.
Republican-led state legislatures have passed hundreds of laws to suppress votes, up to and including empowering partisans to overturn election results they don’t like.

Senator Feinstein gave a strong statement supporting For the People Act in June but hasn’t issued a similar one about the Freedom to Vote Act, nor has she co-sponsored it. She has also made some equivocal statements, both for and against modifications to the filibuster. Therefore, some Indivisible members are again gathering outside her office on Friday afternoons to remind her that we are still under an urgent Deadline for Democracy

In July President Biden gave a very comprehensive address to the nation about voting rights that included affirmation of the many legal challenges to the election that the former president’s team had lost, warnings about Republican legislatures introducing voter suppression laws and the intimidation of election officials, and more. But the Biden Administration’s position on the filibuster hasn’t always been clear--from not supporting any changes in March to backing a talking filibuster a few months later, then backing off any recommendations on that subject.

We have witnessed ever-increasing threats against election officials by Republican vigilante groups, which have made it necessary for the FBI task force to ramp up its activities. This mob violence and intimidation are far more radical and damaging to our republic than creating an exemption to the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote Act would be. Our president should use his bully pulpit and private pressure to get that done now.

Our Deadline for Democracy continues. While we await the strong defense of our voting rights through passage of the Freedom to Vote Act, the power of vigilantism is being extended to include attacks on school boards for protecting our children from COVID, and for teaching our nation’s history.