Rural Coalition Statement on Voting Rights

January 11, 2022

Contacts:

Lorette Picciano, RC Executive Director, Rural Coalition, 703-624-8869, Email: lpicciano@ruralco.org,

RC Chairperson John Zippert, Alabama Association of Cooperatives, 205-657-0271, email: Jzippert@aol.com

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Statement on Voting Rights

The Rural Coalition is an alliance of farmers, farm workers, indigenous, migrant, and working people from the United States, Mexico, Canada, and beyond, working together toward a new society that values unity, hope, people, and the land.

 Our membership is concentrated in rural communities that experience persistent poverty and have suffered years of neglect, discrimination and exploitation, which has limited our ability to contribute to the nation’s strength and success.

 We have historically and we today support the efforts of President Biden, Vice-President Harris, and members of the House of Representatives and Senate that support the expansion and extension of voting rights as critical to the continuance of democracy and the inclusion of all people in our society in the benefits of our national policies, priorities and their successful implementation.

 We enthusiastically support the passage of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act which will ensure national standards for voting and defeat efforts to suppress and diminish the voting rights of rural, low-income, young and people of color.

 We support the provisions of these bills which would standardize the election process, provide for automatic voter registration, allow for ‘no-excuse’ voting by mail, mandate two weeks of early voting everywhere, make Election Day a national holiday, limit ‘dark money’ in politics, end gerrymandering of districts and make sure votes are counted fairly.  

John Zippert, Rural Coalition Chairperson and longtime Alabama voting rights activist, said, “Passage of these two bills, would strengthen our voting rights organizing. For instance, this would allow our member organizations to stop being required to transport copy machines around in their vehicles, to rural and tribal communities, to copy peoples’ voter ID’s, to enable them to vote by absentee ballot.

 We endorse the position of the Biden Administration that at minimum there be a “carve-out” of the filibuster, if not its complete elimination, to allow for the passage of critical legislation effecting voting and citizenship rights.

 We call upon all members of the U. S. Senate, regardless of party, to support this critical legislation to preserve and expand our democracy and voting rights in America.

 Everyone in our nation, who cares about a future for farmers, ranchers and rural communities needs to call your Congressional delegations- and especially your U. S. Senators, this week, to urge them to support these two voting rights bills and the adjustments to the Senate filibuster rules to make passage of this legislation possible.

The Rural Coalition, born of the civil rights and anti-poverty rural movements, has worked for 30 years to assure that diverse organizations from all regions, racial, and ethnic groups and by gender have the opportunity to work in solidarity on the issues that affect them all.  The foundation of this work is strong local, regional and national organizations that work to assure the representation and involvement of every sector of this diverse fabric of rural peoples.