# Campaign Letter Template — Voting Rights

A letter from a campaign to its base. Use this template for the first "we are running this campaign" letter or a major escalation letter. Replace every `[bracketed]` field. Keep total length under one screen on a phone.

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**Subject line (pick one, lower-case, personal):**
- voting in [county] just got harder — here's what we're doing
- a fight worth having
- [first name], can I tell you what we're up against?

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Hi [first name],

I'm [your name], and I organize with [organization] in [city/county]. We've been knocking on doors and sitting at kitchen tables in [neighborhood / district] for the last [N] months, listening to people about what's happening to their right to vote.

Here's what we've learned: [one specific local fact — closed polling place, purged voter rolls, voter ID rule, restricted drop-box, shortened early-voting window]. That isn't an accident. It's a decision made by [name the decision-maker — Secretary of State, county elections board, state legislature].

**The good news:** [decision-maker] has not yet [finalized / implemented / been forced to reverse] that decision, and they are not immune to public pressure from the people they were elected to serve.

**That's where you come in.** We are building a base of [N] [renters / parents / faith leaders / students / neighbors] in [geography] who will:

1. **[Specific action 1 — sign on, attend a hearing, host a kitchen-table meeting]** by [date].
2. **[Specific action 2 — bring two friends, make five calls]** by [date].
3. **Show up to [specific event with date, time, place]** to put real bodies in the room.

This is how voting rights have always been won in this country — not by lawsuits alone, not by good intentions, but by Black-led, Southern-rooted organizing that does the slow relational work and then turns out at the right moment. [Local lineage reference — e.g., "It's how Helen Butler and the People's Agenda have been doing it for over twenty years in Georgia" / "It's how the Citizenship Schools registered voters across the rural South."]

The single most useful thing you can do this week is one of these:

- **Reply to this email** with a sentence about how the voting changes are affecting people you know. We will read every reply.
- **RSVP to [event]** at [link].
- **Forward this email to two people** in your life who would care.

If you can give 30 minutes for a phone call this month, hit reply and say "let's talk." I'll come to you.

In it with you,

[Your full name]
[Title], [Organization]
[Phone number people can actually text]

PS — [One concrete and very local detail: the next public hearing date, a specific stat about your county, a one-line story from a 1:1 you ran this week (with permission). Make this the most concrete sentence in the whole letter.]

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## Why this letter is structured this way

- **Hook with a specific local fact.** Not "voting rights are under attack" — a closed polling place at [school name].
- **Name the decision-maker.** Voting suppression is a choice by a named body. The letter must say so.
- **Three asks, ranked.** Reply / RSVP / forward. Reply is the highest-value ask because it starts the relationship.
- **Lineage credit.** Voting rights organizing has a tradition. Name it. Don't claim you invented this.
- **A real phone number.** Texting is the highest-trust channel. If you don't want texts, hire someone who does.
- **PS with a local detail.** The PS gets read more than the body. Put your sharpest specific there.

— Module 1, *Base Building From Scratch*