CREDO helps you tell the Election Assistance Commission's Inspector General to investigate the EAC Director's recent decision to let Kansas, Alabama, and Georgia require proof of citizenship to vote. What's that, you say? Shouldn't you have to prove you're a citizen to vote? Here's a better question: do you routinely carry information proving your citizenship around with you? No, that's not your driver's license: it's your birth certificate, your passport, your certificate of citizenship, or your naturalization certificate, and you carry none of these in your wallet. And no, these states do not intend to target "undocumented immigrants" -- they mean to target black and Latino voters. These states have already pulled similar shenanigans, after all -- closing down DMVs in black neighborhoods (Alabama), putting out Spanish-language voting guides with inaccurate info (Kansas), or just plain old sitting on voter registrations from black folks (Georgia). So I'm going to go out on a limb and predict they won't ask any white voters for their paperwork.
Meanwhile, you may not have given any thought to this matter, but your set-top cable box may be costing you as much as $230 annually. But your cable provider won't permit you to use any other device with their service -- instead, they require you to get the box they want you to get and then overcharge you for it every month. The FCC has proposed rules that would force big cable corporations to allow you to use the box you want, even if it's not their box, and if you've watched Hulu or Netflix over your Wii or XBox, you already know this isn't some pipe dream. Of course, the cable corporations are treating it like that, and they're counting on you not to notice all the fees they stick in that bill you pay every month. But President Obama has, surprisingly, spoken out in favor of the FCC proposals, and the FCC is accepting public comments on the matter now, so Demand Progress helps you tell the FCC to protect consumers from excessive set-top box fees and require cable corporations to give us more choice in the matter.
Finally, Congress has been negligent in reauthorizing school breakfast and lunch programs. Obviously Congress hasn't been so negligent as to let kids starve while they're at school, at least not yet, but without an actual sense of what our government will spend on school meals for the next few years, schools won't know what equipment they'll be able to afford or what staff they'll be able to hire, among other things that actually require long-range planning. Of course, Congress likes that sort of chaos, more so now, even, than in Tha Bush Mobb years. But, once again: it doesn't matter what they want, it matters what we want, and that's a stable school lunch program with nutritious meals for kids. Really, you'd have to be a Scrooge McSmallgovernment to disagree. Hence the Pew Charitable Trusts helps you tell Congress to reauthorize the school meal program already. Note that Pew's email action tool helps you demand they keep the USDA's stricter nutrition standards, too, since Congress has been so hot to gut those.
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