A Republican majority on the Montgomery County Board of Elections voted 3-2 to eliminate the early voting East County and Bethesda. Please sign this petition to the Maryland State Board of Elections asking them to overturn this cynical and unacceptable decision.

The Marilyn J. Praisner Recreation Center in East County was one of Montgomery County’s original early voting sites. During the last election, the site was the second-highest-performing with the highest concentration of minority and low-income voters. Yet with the Board of Elections’ recent decision, thousands of voters will now be over ten miles away from an early voting site.

The Jane E. Lawton Community Center is the only down-county early voting site and is within walking distance of the Bethesda Metro Station. This makes it a convenient and high accessible location by transit for the approximately 50,000 people who live and work in downtown Bethesda. 

This action by the Board is naked voter suppression that will make it more difficult for thousands of working families and minorities to register to vote and cast a ballot -- and is akin to previous efforts by Republicans in Maryland and across the country to make voting harder. 

We should do everything we can to make it easier for every citizen to vote. Sign the petition to fight back against this decision, and send a clear message that we should be expanding early voting access not eliminating it!