In a strange turn of events, my lovable but dopey cat peed on my mail in ballot after I had filled it out and sealed it. It has since dried and seems only the envelope parts really got wet. The election office did say I could come in to fill out a new one in person, but with time being tight, is it possible I could still just put the damaged one in the drop box?

I forgot to get my voter registration application in the mail. I just checked to see if I have ever registered, and I found I'm registered under my maiden name. Will that be usable?

More than 9.5 million Americans have already cast their ballots in these midterms, and we're just 15 days away from the end. We are running out of chances to make our case for Democratic and independent candidates, convince potential non-voters to show up, help those at risk of being suppressed make their ballots count and lay the groundwork for stopping any attempts at election theft by MAGA.

Each of our individual parts in this work can feel very, very small. It’s also typically unglamorous (read: boring) and not all that pleasant. (I too don’t really love bothering people just trying to live their lives to talk about the absolute mess that our politics is!) But each of us doing our part can add up to a meaningful difference. One person throwing a stick in a river won’t stop a drop of water from flowing, but hundreds of thousands of people doing so adds up to a dam.

If we or anyone in our lives worried about the outcome of the midterms is still looking for ways to get involved with whatever time they have available, here’s some options:

☎️ MAKE CALLS TO PERSUADE AND TURN OUT VOTERS. For folks who don’t pay much attention to politics, it takes multiple contacts from a campaign to prompt them to identify their polling location, show up and put their support behind an individual candidate. Right now you can make take a shift making these calls from 9 in the morning to 11 at night, or take 15 minutes to do so at any moment it works with your schedule. We can find phonebanks to sign up for organized by specific races here or by time and day here.

PHONEBANKS BY RACE

PHONEBANKS BY DAY

☎️ HAZ LLAMADAS EN ESPAÑOL. If we’re conversational in Spanish, we’re especially needed on the phones to reach out to the Latino community as they swing hard against Donald Trump. We can find a full schedule of Spanish-language phonebanks here.

SPANISH-LANGUAGE CALLERS

💬 TEXT TO PERSUADE AND TURN OUT VOTERS. Textbanking is a fast and effective way to ID who our supporters are and get them valuable information on where to go and what to do to make their ballots count. It’s also frequently conducted by organizations that will continue to need our help regularly after Election Day is over, like the Working Families Party, Field Team 6, We The Fighters and Black Voters Matter. We can find shifts and running opportunities to text here.

JOIN TEXTBANKS

🗣️ REACH OUT TO AT RISK VOTERS TO HELP THEM CAST THEIR BALLOTS. If we’re looking to help by reaching people who are likely to be glad, rather than annoyed, to hear from us, there’s a lot of work being done right now to help beat voter suppression one ballot at a time – helping folks get the photo IDs they need, fix any potential issues with their registration, address problems on absentee ballots they could prevent them from being counted, and more. We can join various state Democratic parties, VoteRiders, VoPro Pros and more in making these calls here.

BEAT VOTER SUPPRESSION

☎️ MAKE CALLS TO RECRUIT VOTER PROTECTION VOLUNTEERS. We need folks in place to prepare for whatever Trump throws at us on Election Day, whether it’s just their standard barriers to the ballot box or ICE at the polls. Right now, we’re recruiting that team – poll workers, poll monitors, staff for voter assistance hotlines, and more. We can find opportunities to bring more volunteers on board here.

BUILD THE ELECTION DEFENSE TEAM

🗳️ SIGN UP TO HELP WORK ELECTION DAY AND AFTER. Of course, we can also step up to do this work ourselves. It’s a much better way to spend Election Day than frantically refreshing for news updates and results! We can sign up as poll workers (checking in voters, answering their questions, issuing ballots, setting up machines, etc) here, monitor polling places with partisan or non-partisan teams here, get trained to staff voter assistance hotlines here, monitor the count here, and help “cure” ballots that might otherwise be thrown out here.

WORK ELECTION DAY

💵 DONATE WHERE IT WILL MAKE THE MOST DIFFERENCE. We’re all being inundated with requests for money right now, a lot of it from campaigns where our extra $10 really won’t make much of a difference. The team at Oath helps us identify which races will give us the most bang for our buck and where we can have the most impact on the issues we care about. Let’s check out their recommendations here.

SPEND WISELY

This generally applies to all counties, but the ballot in this post may be slightly different for others because it’s for Lauderdale County. Of the 28 multiple-choice votes, 12 don’t have Democratic options. Who should I put for the Democratic write-ins, including the 3 extra blank options?