A: A LOT!
We Nerdy Girls are proud to be engaged citizens and passionate advocates for exercising our right to vote. In fact, we are launching a weekly series to help offer you some practical tips for voting safely and supporting your community.
**As a friendly reminder, the Dear Pandemic community is strictly non-partisan, and our diverse community includes all political parties. Our weekly voting series, like all our posts, is meant to arm you with knowledge and practical information to stay safe and stay sane during this year’s election. We will be hiding all partisan comments (to the extent that our team’s bandwidth allows), so please respect our commitment to providing resources to support everyone’s right to vote. Thank you!**
Even though we are 7 weeks away from Election Day, COVID-19 has taught us we need to start preparing early and often. But let’s start with the “why.” Why are we so worried about voting during a global pandemic?
Voting at the local, state, and federal level is critical to a healthy democracy and a healthy America. Elected officials have incredible power to shape the health of our communities, from helping to prevent pollution to ensuring access to healthcare for those who need it. And, as we have seen this year, responses to public health emergencies require action and coordination from our local, state, and federal officials, and we at Dear Pandemic think it’s pretty important to make our voices heard in evaluating and choosing the folks in those roles.
Even in these COVID times, public health needs and responses are often local and state issues – what works for Maine might not work for New Mexico, right? The Kaiser Family Foundation (non-partisan) has put together a comprehensive overview of each state’s COVID policies (including travel quarantine, restaurant limits, face covering mandates, and more) that can help to visualize just how important local and state action has been in navigating this pandemic. We think this is a great resource to see how your state shapes up, and an important reminder that our votes matter in choosing the best people to lead us in a crisis.
As we kick off our voting series, we also wanted to share a non-partisan Healthy Voting Guide, developed in part by the American Public Health Association (APHA) and other expert groups. This guide helps you to find the mail and in-person voting processes, rules, and deadlines for your state. We love how easy it is to search!
In the next few weeks before Election Day in the U.S., we will be sharing more resources on voter registration, voting by mail, and staying safe while voting in-person at the polls. If you have a specific voting question, please drop it in our Question Box that can be found at the bottom of the home page on our website dearpandemic.org so we can incorporate some advice into our posts!
Stay safe, stay sane.
With love,
Those Nerdy Girls
