Here are the facts: --Yesterday I went to the RNC Rules Committee meeting to deliver our petition. --I was denied entry to the meeting but managed to get the petition to the right people. --The Ted Cruz delegate contingency was at the meeting and made their case for more closed primaries. Reports indicated that the GOP was strongly considering their appeal. --They failed. The Rules Committee made a recommendation to the RNC delegates to retain the status quo. --This is an important victory but the Committee still failed to pass open primaries. Now, it’s onwards to Philadelphia, where we will deliver our petition to the Democratic Convention. Several Democratic state delegations have endorsed open primaries, hundreds of delegates support the issue, and we have activists on the ground in every state working toward victory. It’s the home stretch, bottom of the ninth, final seconds. Your support has been crucial to our efforts in the past few months, and everything that we’ve done this year to lead the fight for open primaries has come to this moment. We need to reach 100,000 by the Democratic Convention to have a massive impact and force the Democratic Party to respond. If everyone can get 3 more signatures, we will easily surpass 100,000. The dynamics for the DNC are much different from those of the RNC: --At the RNC, Ted Cruz, the second-place finisher and a party insider, called for closed primaries. The GOP was sympathetic to his case yet they still didn’t act on it. We were up against delegates who wanted the inverse of our movement. --At the DNC, Bernie Sanders, the second-place finisher and an insurgent, has called for open primaries alongside his delegates. The Democrats seem interested in retaining the status quo, but we’re in a much stronger position to have a positive impact with your help. Please join us. Do it for the 33,000+ Americans who signed our petitions because they are fed up with our ineffective political system. Do it for the 70% of Americans who support open primaries. Do it for the 26.3 million who are denied a voice in the presidential primary. Do it because you and I both know that it is the best thing for our country. This movement doesn’t end until the voters take back our democracy. Thank you, Al Benninghoff Legislative Director Open Primaries