Voters Helping Voters

Voters Helping Voters is a small, but growing grassroots group of people who are reaching out to help fellow voters in Missouri navigate the obstacles to voting via absentee and mail-in ballots for the 2020 election.  Our goal is to get absentee/mail-in ballot information and ballots into the hands of 10,000 Jackson County voters. 

The Issue:
Despite a global health pandemic, the state of Missouri has determined that individuals who would prefer to vote by mail must run an onerous and confusing procedural gauntlet.  An absentee/mail-in ballot must be requested via mail, and the ballot itself must be notarized, unless exempted.  Our group is concerned that the multiple roadblocks to voting by mail will result in large scale lack of participation in the election.  In other words, widespread voter suppression.

What We Are Doing:
Our plan is to enable as many remote voters as we can help.  Our strategy is two-fold:  Part 1 involves educating and aiding voters in the ballot request process by distributing Ballot Request Packets.  Part 2 mobilizes notaries to stamp the non-exempted ballots in a way that is easy, accessible, and cost-free. 

What We Need:
People!  We need volunteers to help with getting the ballot request packets out.  People who know how to use a stapler. People to make copies.  We need notaries!  Several of us have already gone through the notary commission process and can guide you along, should you choose to walk the path of the Notary.  
Funds!  While we need physical people to volunteer (and that is CRITICAL),  there is no way we can realize our full potential impact without financial volunteers.  The folks who are becoming notaries are picking up those expenses themselves, but we will need funds for paper, copies, envelopes, stamps . . .  the mundane, but necessary tools of revolution ;)

(UPDATED: We found better bulk pricing, so now your donation goes even further!)

$20 donation pays for 142 Ballot Request Packets (ballot request form, instructions, and a return envelope to the KC Election Board).

$50 donation pays for 357 ballot packets.

$100 donation pays for over 700 ballot request packets.

Any amount is appreciated and will make a difference.  The world is a crazy place these days, and many of us feel powerless to affect change.  This is your opportunity to affect change.  Your chance to help a fellow voter realize one of their most basic and fundamental rights as a citizen of this amazing, diverse, sometimes messy, but always inspiring country.  The right to vote.

In the words we heard today from the late John Lewis,

"Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.  Voting and participating in the democratic process are key.  The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society.  You must use it because it is not guaranteed.  You can lose it."