541 Early Voting Petition Signatures
In less than two months, we collected 541 signatures to support early voting in PA. A big thumbs-up to everyone who signed, and a special thanks to Jessica Weingarten on the Eastern side of the state for collecting additional signatures.
Constituents’ signatures from over half of all the senate districts in PA were collected. They were mailed off to Harrisburg today, and put in the hands of Sen. Daylin Leach of Montgomery County, who sponsored the senate version of the legislation.
“This bill would do three things. It would expand opportunities for people to vote, shorten lines on Election Day, and allow time for disputes to be resolved,” said Sen. Leach.
We here at the PA League agree that the early voting option provides a form of election protection in that there’s time to address voting machine errors, a reduction in long lines on election day, and is without the concern of absentee ballot fraud.
Anything that responsibly makes voting easier and, therefore, more likely that more people will vote, is a good thing in our book.
Considering that turnout for the last presidential election was still only about 62% of all registered voters (no even counting citizens who could register but still haven’t), our country still needs to promote voting and make it easier in order for us to truly realize a participatory democracy and have an accountable government.
Anyway, I’m proud of our work on this. We’ll be sure to keep you informed on what happens. The full text of SB 445 and HB 238 (intoduced by Rep. Eugene DePasquale of York County) is available online. And it’s not too late to contact your senator or representative about this — their info can always be found here.
Yours,Carly Dobbins-Bucklad, Director