What Obama 2012 is up to today with email from Obama for America entitled "Absolutely Urgent"

Friend —

We’ve been working on bringing new people into the political process. That will be the story of our campaign from start to finish.

But right now there’s a concerted effort being made in states from New Hampshire to North Carolina to Ohio to make sure fewer people vote in 2012.

Here’s how they’re doing it: In some crucial battleground states, more than 50 percent of ballots are cast as part of early voting, which makes voting an easier and more flexible process. In 2008, a third of voters nationwide cast their votes before Election Day.

These voters tend to be working families and young people, and a whole lot of them voted for Barack Obama — in some states providing our margin of victory.

So Republican-controlled legislatures are cutting the amount of time people have to vote early, restricting when and how organizations like ours can register new voters, and making the voting process itself more difficult by requiring new types of identification, which lower-income voters are less likely to have.

They’re doing this because they have cynically concluded that they do better when fewer people vote.

That’s the opposite of the kind of politics we believe in, and of the kind of campaign we want to run.

So when we talk about the work this campaign will do to bring new people into the political process — registering new voters, training new volunteers, building an organization — it’s not just the right thing to do. It’s absolutely urgent.

Help us protect those the other side is trying to keep out. Please donate $5 or more today:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Right-to-Vote

Thanks,

Messina

Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

P.S. — You’re going to be hearing a lot more about this. For more information on systematic voter suppression efforts, read this New York Times editorial from over the weekend.

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