Last year my (red, Southern, affected by the VRA) state lost my voter registration and put me in limbo, but oddly they did not lose my DH’s. Instead, just for fun, they misread DH’s response to their snail mail asking if he wanted to stay registered as a “no” instead of a “yes” and cut him off. We each had to file another form with the county office to get reinstated. You may want to check up on yours, you know, just in case.
There are a lot of ways to check your voter registration.
Probably the easiest is to type into google, “am I registered to vote“. Google will respond with information that is specific to your state. It’s lovely.
If that doesn’t work for you for whatever reason, vote.org has a lovely page that will link you to all the different state sites where you can check across the country.
After checking the status of your registration, most of these sites will have a link for you to register to vote. You can again google “how do I register to vote” and google will take you to the appropriate site, or vote.gov is a website that will take you to the state registration site appropriate for you.
Some states will allow you to register online, but for others you still have to mail in information.
Deadlines are starting to hit now. Again, googling, “voter registration date” will get you the information relevant to you, or you can look at a page like this one. Note also that some places want snail registrations by the date listed whereas others will accept post-marked by the date listed. If you haven’t registered to vote in the US yet and you are eligible we’re really getting to the time where there’s not much time left.
If you’re in a state that you’re sure isn’t going to change one way or the other, don’t be so sure. Polling has been getting all sorts of messed up as people move from landlines to cellphones and we don’t really know the underlying trends like we did even 12 years ago. In addition, this election has been like no other. Bigots are excited about the pro-Bigot candidate, whereas everyone else is terrified of Trump. There’s a lot of silent Clinton supporters out there in red states, as well as bigots you will hopefully never cross paths with. Anything could happen. (Plus downstream ballots are also important!)
So, vote! Tell your friends, family, etc. to register before it’s too late! The future of the free world may depend on it.
Are you registered to vote?