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VOTING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
The Voting Rights Act did not come without sacrifice. The law protected Blacks from intimidation and wicked tactics to keep them from voting. The backlash to Black progress has been potent. This page and our downloadable checklist aim to empower Black people across New Jersey to be informed and show up this election season.
BEFORE YOU HEAD TO THE POLLS
1. Declare your party affiliation. In order to vote in the primary, you must declare your party affiliation. You can do so at your polling location during early in-person voting or on election day.​
2. You can apply for a mail-in ballot up until June 3rd. Return it by mailing it to your county’s Board of Elections (postmarked by June 9th) or by delivering it in person to your county’s Board of Elections office by Election Day.
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SOULS TO THE POLLS
Historically and to this day, Black and Brown communities have been systematically disenfranchised from the voting process in the United States. Black voter suppression across the country has taken on many forms from direct intimidation tactics, gerrymandering, voter identification laws, and much more.
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In the 2020 general elections, despite significant increases in overall voter population, 71 percent of eligible white voters cast ballots compared to 58.4 percent of non-white voters. The Brennan Center for Justice notes that “…in the final weeks of 2020 and in 2021, state legislators across the country pre-filed or introduced more than 400 bills with provisions that would restrict voting access.”
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In response to historic and current attempts to suppress voting access, for decades the Black church has become a place in which disenfranchised communities take back their power and their right to vote through organizing. Souls to the Polls “is a concentrated effort at Black churches to get everyone to go to the poll…driving as many of the church attendees as possible to the poll to vote.”2 The impact and effect of this effort through the Black church is invaluable to empowering disenfranchised communities, engaging in the democratic process, and ensuring that all we live up to the values of equity and equality in representation.