Early voting is officially underway in many states, and so far the turnout is smashing records!
In Virginia, nearly twice as many early ballots have been cast so far compared to this time in the 2022 midterms. In the city of Nashville, voter turnout is currently 15 times higher than the last midterm. In North Carolina, more than 27,000 ballots were cast within the first few hours of early voting yesterday. And in Georgia, voters set a first day early voting record with more than 188,000 ballots cast. More than 36% of those were cast by Black voters, up 6% from 2024.
This is all great news, but it doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. The stakes are too high. Let’s keep this momentum going into November 3rd — all gas, no brakes!
Sign our pledge here to turn out your friends and family to vote.
In other good news, a court has ruled that Ohio’s private school vouchers are unconstitutional. The state’s “EdChoice” program uses public taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition. Ohio actually spent more than a billion dollars of taxpayer money on private school vouchers last year.
We’ve talked before about how school vouchers are almost exclusively used for private religious schools by families who could already afford them, with the ultimate goal of defunding public education. (To learn more, you can listen to our episode of The Cost of Extremism about vouchers… or really anything Jess Piper says!)
Now that an Ohio appellate court has ruled that the EdChoice program is unconstitutional, the decision will be appealed even higher to the state Supreme Court. Let’s keep making our voices heard and support our public schools!
Speaking of Ohio schools, high schoolers at Copley-Fairlawn High School near Akron have raised $10,000 to put on an independent production of the play She Kills Monsters.
Students were dismayed when the school district suddenly cancelled their production because a parent complained about the LGBTQ+ themes in the play. But they resolved to perform at a local independent theater instead, starting a GoFundMe to raise the $800 needed to obtain the performance rights to the show. Within days, they raised more than $10,000!
The show must go on, and because of the generosity of neighbors and strangers alike, now it will.
There are officially 18 days left until the midterms. Let’s use these positive stories to put wind in our sails to carry us through to the finish line. Make sure everyone you know is voting up and down the ballot. We can do this!