Hi there! Welcome to Easy A–Your go-to source for quick and easy actions you can take in five minutes or less about the issues you care about.
Are you a busy mom? Or maybe your work is so hectic you can’t think about anything else during the day? A lot of us are also taking care of parents or other loved ones too, leaving little time for anything else.
The good news is that these are things you can do while you’re waiting in the school pick up line, on your lunch break, or even at your kid’s soccer practice – anywhere you happen to be! And you can easily share Easy A with your friends so they can be in the know, too! We’ll send you a new action to take every week–just one, we promise –and it will always be something you can do in five minutes or less. Ready to get started? Let’s go!
Read This: How American Elections are Run
American voters just delivered historic wins in the midterm elections. And despite mis- and disinformation being circulated to reduce our trust in the system, the election ran smoothly. This is thanks to how our elections are run, and how election officials make sure they are secure and that every vote gets counted.
Who manages elections in the U.S.?
While there are federal laws about voting, elections are not run by the federal government. The U.S. Constitution gives the states the authority over when, where, and how elections are conducted. They are managed by a system of more than 10,000 state and local jurisdictions. Exact procedures vary from state to state.
In most, but not all, states, the Secretary of State oversees elections that are managed by Boards of Elections. The management and staffing of elections is done by 10,000 career election officials and 800,000 poll workers in more than 130,000 polling locations nationwide.
These trained professionals are our friends and neighbors. At least 44 states legally require poll workers to live in the same precinct or county where their polling place is located.
What steps do U.S. elections officials take to make sure our elections are secure?
The localized system of election management makes it very difficult and highly unlikely for widespread interference in elections to occur. Jurisdictions also share best practices and security measures for conducting transparent, free and fair elections:
- They follow federal laws for list maintenance of voter rolls.
- Voters are required to provide proof of their eligibility to vote.
- Mail ballots have unique serial codes for tracking.
- There are rules governing the chain of custody and storage of ballots.
- There are state and federal security standards for voting machines including testing and auditing. Most jurisdictions use machines in conjunction with paper ballots which are kept for auditing if necessary.
- States have certification laws that outline thorough and careful procedures for counting all votes.
- Many states require that polling place staff have bipartisan representation.
- All voting sites are open to independent poll watchers who can be partisan appointees.
- There are rules that prevent poll observers from interfering with voting.
- Jurisdictions create protection plans for many threatening scenarios.
What should voters expect on an Election Day?
Free and fair elections are the rule of law and they are our right. Voters should be able to easily find out when, where, and how they can vote in their jurisdiction. Everyone who is eligible and registered to vote should be able to cast their ballot and have it counted. Eligible voters should expect to vote without any fear or intimidation, and they should never get turned away before casting their ballot. Finally, we should all expect our candidates and elected officials to accept the certified outcomes of elections.
What if voters run into problems while voting?
Election officials game-plan and prepare for many possible scenarios. They are ready to push back on any threats. But if any issues arise that affect your ability to vote, or if you witness anything keeping others from voting, you can report it to the national Election Protection Hotline at 866ourvote.org.
When should voters expect to know election results?
In this day and age, we all want immediate gratification, but elections don’t work like that. Election night results are unofficial. Even though we see minute-by-minute tracking of election results on our 24-hour news channels, those are just projections. Votes are counted and certified, and races are officially called by elections officials.
Full counting of ballots takes awhile, because it includes processing mail-in ballots, counting provisional ballots, and “curing” ballots that have issues. When elections are too close to call, there can be recounts. All this can take days, weeks, sometimes even months.
These careful processes make sure that every vote is counted and certified. Voters should welcome this, even if it takes longer, because it means our systems are working.
Should voters worry about election security?
We should all be committed to free and fair elections and vigilant about making sure they take place as they should. Fortunately, there is very little evidence of voter fraud in the U.S. With our voting plans in hand, we can vote in every election with confidence and without fear!
Do This: Help your friends get ready to vote
Now that you’ve made your voting plan for the midterm elections – and maybe even voted early! – it’s time to take it one step further.
It’s not enough just to vote this year. That’s because we know a lot of people don’t vote in midterm elections, and as rockstar historian Heather Cox Richardson told us, the most effective thing we can do to change that is to talk to our friends and family about voting.
So, think about everyone in your circle of influence. Your group chats and work besties. Your neighbors. Your book clubs or faith-based groups or other parents at your kids’ activities. (If you can’t think of some names, this worksheet can help!) Anyone you know and regularly interact with is likely to trust you and listen when you talk about the issues close to your heart.
Then, earn your Easy A this week by reaching out to them in the way that is most comfortable to you. Remind them that Election Day is on November 3 and encourage them to make their plan to vote. You can give them the same Voting Plan worksheet you filled out last week.
You can share the worksheet link, and if you need a little help coming up with what to say, you can use this premade message to share the worksheet using most email, messaging, and social media apps. You can easily reach at least a few people in five minutes or less!
Since 2018, 660 elections were decided by 10 votes or fewer! So whether it’s through DMs, email, a phone call, or an in-person chat, a simple conversation encouraging people you know to vote can make all the difference in election outcomes. We’ve got five days until Election Day, so let’s spread the word!
Do This: Make your Voting Plan for the Midterm Elections
There are probably a lot of reasons fewer people vote in midterm elections than in presidential elections.
Maybe they don’t know that they’re happening. Maybe they don’t know who is running for state and local offices, or they don’t realize how important those offices are to our day to day lives. Or maybe they have every intention to vote, but something unexpected happens on election day that keeps them from getting to the polls.
What can we do to change this trend and increase voter turnout in the midterms? Researchers at Notre Dame and Harvard have the answer. They’ve shown that simply making a voting plan can increase voter turnout by more than 4%.
Just taking a moment to decide how, when, and where you’re voting — and arranging for any special help you might need to make it happen — can make all the difference.
So, earn your Easy A this week by making your own plan to vote in this year’s midterm elections. Use our worksheet here to help.
We can be the voters who definitely show up this year, and next week, we’ll take one more easy action before November 3 to turnout as many other voters as possible.
Watch This: Heather Cox Richardson’s Midterm Election Advice
Midterm Election Day is just around the corner on November 3, but early voting has already started, or is starting in many states soon. In other words, the election is now!
We know it’s important to vote in the midterms, but we also know that many of our friends and neighbors don’t do it. So, it’s not enough that we ourselves just show up and vote, we also need to encourage everyone we know to join us. That’s why Red Wine & Blue does friend-to-friend organizing, the most effective way to turn out voters every election.
Earn your Easy A this week by watching everyone’s favorite historian, Heather Cox Richardson, explain why friend-to-friend organizing is the most important and effective thing you can do right now to influence midterm election results.
We can’t assume that everyone we know is registered, has a plan, and is ready to show up to vote in the midterms. Even some of Heather’s friends weren’t! We’ll continue to take easy actions between now and Election Day to make sure we’re all ready to vote!
Read This: Five reasons to vote in the midterm elections
We are just 26 days away from midterm Election Day, so let’s spend the next few weeks getting ourselves and everyone we know ready to vote.
Voters usually turnout more in Presidential elections than they do in midterm elections. For example, 66% of voters cast a ballot in 2020’s Presidential election and 64% in 2024, but only 46% voted in the 2022 midterms!
That’s a problem because midterm elections decide local and statewide leaders, including the people who make decisions about our schools and state laws, as well as the direction our cities and counties will take. Midterms also decide who represents us in Congress. All of these positions impact our daily lives just as much as the President does, often even more.
Here are five reasons why voting in midterm elections, especially local races, is important:
- Turning out voters for local races in the midterms automatically helps the more visible national races. Bottom line, we need more people voting for every race. If people are excited about voting for local races because they care about the issues that are hitting close to home, they are far more likely to also vote for the bigger races at the top of the ballot. It doesn’t always work the other way around. The more voices heard for every seat, the better.
- The people we put in power during the midterms help check executive power. Local power is our greatest leverage against decisions we don’t like at the national level. School boards make decisions about our kids’ and grandkids’ schools. City, town, and county leaders decide what happens with data centers, surveillance cameras, and detention centers in our communities. State legislatures set public school funding and access to health care. The people we elect in the midterms provide important checks and balances on the executive branch elected during Presidential elections.
- Voting for local races in the midterms keeps us civically engaged, even if national-level politics has turned us off. Millions of people are overwhelmed, exhausted, and turned off by capital-P Politics right now. We get it! But we all still care about what’s happening in our schools and neighborhoods, because that’s personal. Voting for midterm races keeps us connected and makes sure our voices are heard.
- Voting for local races in the midterms helps people focus on issues and candidates, not political parties. Voters, especially suburban women, are disillusioned by party politics and are avoiding or abandoning party affiliations altogether. We want to focus on our values and improving our communities. Focusing on local races, some of which are nonpartisan, helps us do that.
- Keeping voters engaged during midterm elections builds opportunities to stay involved year-round. Our democracy works best when citizens are actively involved in the process and in local government. Voting in every single election keeps us in the know. It’s also the most powerful way to be heard and to hold our elected representatives accountable.
We should be voting in every single election, and Red Wine & Blue knows the most impactful way to get voters involved – and have fun while doing it! Over the next few weeks, we’ll take more easy actions to get everyone we know ready to vote in the November 3 midterms.
Do This: Participate in Banned Books Week
Unite Against Book Bans, an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA), hosts Banned Books Week every year. This year’s Banned Books Week starts in just a few days and runs from October 4 to 10.
More than 4,200 books were challenged in 2025, and we need to stand up for the right to read. There are a lot of things we can do to fight book bans. Every action we take, no matter how big or small, makes a difference. One of the easiest things we can do is share information!
We need to drown out the noise from the book banners and spread the truth. The ALA has a lot of information and resources on banned and challenged books, and we’re making it super easy for you to share it with your networks.
Take part in Banned Books Week and earn your Easy A by sharing the post below using your favorite social media and messaging apps.
And if you have time to do more, now or in the future, here are some more suggestions for taking action against book bans from Betsy Gomez of the ALA:
- Report censorship to the ALA if and when you see it. Anyone can submit reports to their database.
- Have conversations with friends and family about what’s going on with book bans in our schools and public libraries. The ALA has tips for how to effectively have these conversations.
- Don’t forget to talk with your local librarians, too! Ask them what they need and how you can support them.
- Tell decision makers that you support the freedom to read. Whether it’s school boards, library boards, state legislators, or elected representatives at the national level — if book bans or laws relating to censorship are on the table, make your voice heard through public comments, phone calls, messages, and petitions.
- Volunteer at your local library. Join local boards, book review committees, or a local “Friends of the Library” group.
- Join Red Wine & Blue’s Book Ban Busters.
- Watch our full event with Betsy here to learn more.
Together, we can unite against book bans and protect our freedom to read.
Watch This: How book banners are threatening librarians
If you were asked to list dangerous jobs in America, you might think of firefighters, power line workers, or maybe people in construction. But librarians?
In a recent survey, U.S. library workers reported more than 8,200 traumatic incidents in their jobs, ranging from harassment and threats to verbal abuse and physical assault. Betsy Gomez of the American Library Association (ALA) talked about some of those incidents during a virtual Red Wine & Blue event last month.
Earn your Easy A this week by watching this one-minute video from that event. It might surprise you to hear all the ways our librarians have to worry about their personal safety and security.
Public librarians should be planning children’s story hours, adult literacy workshops, and teen book clubs, but the latest trend in book banning has them making emergency safety plans instead. So next week, to help kick off ALA’s Banned Books Week, we’ll take another easy action in support of librarians, libraries, and the right to read.
Read This: Book banners are coming for librarians
This is the latest phase in the nationwide book banning movement that our friends at PEN America have been tracking since 2021. Their latest report: Out of Circulation: Expanding Censorship in Public Libraries, digs deeper into these new attacks on public libraries and librarians.
The book banning movement isn’t just about taking away our books. It’s also about extremists controlling whose stories get told, what ideas get shared, and what information is freely available for everyone to learn.
Now they’re coming for our beloved librarians. Here’s how, according to the report:
How is censorship expanding in public libraries?
- Books are being banned and removed. 51% of the American Library Association’s documented book bans in 2025 were in public libraries. Bans continue to target books about sex education, gender identity, and race.
- Book displays are being challenged. The same people who are banning books are also demanding that library displays get taken down. They’ve challenged displays on Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride Month, and Banned Books Week, to name a few.
- Public events like story times and author readings are being challenged or cancelled. Story hours with drag performers are often targets. One in Massachusetts was cancelled due to bomb threats and another in Nevada was cancelled after a librarian was injured by an extremist protestor. These cancellations silence authors, hide diverse representation, and take away opportunities for discussion and learning.
- Rules are changing about how and where books are shelved in the library. This sneaky tactic called “reshelving” ignores age recommendations given by authors, publishers, and librarians. Instead, extremists force librarians to reclassify children’s books as young adult, or young adult books as mature, so that younger readers can’t find them.
- Books are being mislabeled. Similar to reshelving, this tactic subjectively places stickers or warning labels on books. They often include misleading claims of “sexual content” which actually stigmatize age-appropriate health topics, making it harder for young people to learn from a wide range of experiences and perspectives.
How are public libraries under attack?
- Local politicians control how libraries are run. The American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights says libraries should offer books and materials on all points of view without political interference. But public libraries are usually managed by local boards who are either elected or appointed by elected officials. When politicians engage in culture wars like book banning, they use their power over library boards to turn censorship into policy, and we all pay the price.
- Library funding is threatened or cut. Public libraries are funded by public dollars from local, state, and even the federal government. When extremists are in control of library management, they are also in control of its funding. They threaten to take away funds – and sometimes do! – if librarians don’t comply with censorship mandates. This is how the Fairhope Public Library in Alabama lost $22,000 in state funding in 2025 and more is being withheld this year.
How are librarians under attack?
- Librarians are being fired. PEN America’s report documents many examples of librarians – from local public librarians to the Librarian of Congress – being fired for not complying with censorship mandates.
- Librarians are the targets of harassment, intimidation, and violence. Library workers reported more than 8,000 incidents of harassment and assault in one 2024 survey. They fear for their safety, which leads to stress, anxiety, and burnout. Some are leaving the profession entirely.
- Professional associations are targeted. Some states including South Carolina, Florida, and Texas have cut ties with the American Library Association, the main professional association for librarians. This hurts the professionalism of the entire field.
- Librarians face new legal liabilities. Arkansas isn’t the only state to pass laws criminalizing librarians – Mississippi, Iowa, and West Virginia have as well.
All of these actions have a chilling effect on librarians. They either overcomply with censorship so they can keep their jobs, or they quit. Either way, we all suffer.
Americans have always loved our libraries and librarians. Benjamin Franklin championed libraries as fundamental to our democracy because they make knowledge accessible to everyone. He founded our first lending library in Philadelphia before he helped found America!
Public libraries continue to be an equalizing space, giving free access to books and materials regardless of our income or class. They’re also the heart of our communities, providing essential services like free internet and gathering spaces.
Need some good news after all of this? PEN America’s report also shares inspiring stories of librarians who fought censorship and the communities that protected them.
We’ve pushed back against book bans for years (you can learn more about our Book Ban Busters here) and we’ll help you take more easy actions over the next few weeks to protect the freedom to read.
Do This: Look up data centers where you live
Data centers are popping up all over the country, but the majority of Americans don’t want them in our community. That’s because we know that data centers pollute our air, use up our water supply, and increase our electricity bills — all without adding anything to the local economy.
Earn your Easy A this week by finding out if you have a data center near you, or if one is on the way.
Use this interactive U.S. Data Centers Tracker from FracTracker Alliance to look up data centers in your area. You can see if a data center has been proposed, approved, or blocked near you, or if any are already operating, expanding, or under construction.
No matter what you find out, if you have more time and want to learn more about how to advocate against data centers in your community, you can watch the recording of our recent event with the AI Now Institute: What You Need to Know: AI Data Centers in Your Community, or bookmark it in case you ever need the information in the future!
Together, we can stay informed and hold Big Tech responsible for their impact on our communities.
Watch This: Living Next to a Data Center
There are more than 4,000 data centers in the U.S.
That’s a lot, and the more we use the internet and AI, the more that number will grow. Still, many of us don’t know much about the impact of data centers if we haven’t personally experienced them in our own community.
People who have felt the impact of data centers warn us that we should learn more about them before it’s too late. Data centers use up a lot of land and local resources, pollute the environment, and don’t even create many jobs or contribute to the local economy.
Earn your Easy A this week by hearing from two Ohio women who are living the reality of having a data center in their neighborhood.
New data centers are being proposed all the time. Next week, we’ll take one more action to learn if your community is next.
Read This: What Everyone Should Know about Data Centers
Whenever we do a quick Google search or snap a picture on our phones and it saves to the “cloud,” many of us don’t think about what that means. The internet feels like an imaginary, infinite space for holding all our digital stuff. But it’s actually all powered by millions of computer towers called servers housed in thousands of data centers across the nation and the world.
The development of data centers has skyrocketed recently due to the increased use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud storage, and cryptocurrency, which all have to be powered and stored somewhere. So, let’s take a look at how this growth in data centers impacts us all.
What is a data center?
Data centers are massive — sometimes more than 10,000 square feet — warehouse facilities filled with the equipment that it takes to power everything we do online. You can think of them as where the internet physically lives.
Why should we be concerned about data centers?
Data centers have a negative impact on local resources and the environment.
- Their massive footprint takes up a lot of land, often land that was previously open, natural space or farmland.
- Data centers require a lot of energy to operate — as much electricity as 900,000 households — which strains the local utility infrastructure and can create power shortages. This leads to rising utility costs that get passed on to all of us, not just the tech corporations.
- They often run on fossil fuels, which creates air pollution linked to asthma, cancer, heart attacks, and cognitive decline.
- Their loud turbines and generators create noise pollution which impacts the quality of life for local residents and wildlife.
- The equipment runs so hot, it requires tons of water to constantly cool it. Large data centers consume the same amount of water as 50,000 people, which puts a real strain on local water supplies.
- Data centers also create waste water containing PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” that can pollute rivers, streams, and groundwater.
Data centers don’t contribute to the local economy.
- Despite what tech corporations may pitch, data centers don’t actually provide many local economic opportunities. Their construction jobs are often done by out-of-state developers, and they produce very few permanent jobs. Most data centers only need about 100 positions to operate, and they are not high-paying.
- Data centers are one of the most highly subsidized industries in the U.S. Tens of millions of our tax dollars go toward data center development every year, and some states have found they’ve lost money on these subsidies! Since the corporations don’t have to pay back into the local system, our communities are bearing the costs while the corporations are raking in the profits. Worse, a lot of these agreements are done without any transparency, shielded by non disclosure agreements.
Most of us would rather see our money go toward services we actually rely on or benefit from, like higher teacher pay and improved roads and parks. Even if we aren’t entirely against the idea of data centers, we want to see them run responsibly, with accountability to the communities in which they operate.
How can we protect our communities from data centers?
The big tech companies would have us believe that this AI Boom is inevitable and so is the addition of these harmful data centers to our communities, but that’s not the case.
Plans to develop data centers can be blocked, put on hold through moratoriums, or regulated by local governments, and that’s where we hold the most power.
Here’s how we can make a difference:
- State legislators, city council members, county commissioners, and other local leaders have the power to decide what gets built where, and how data centers get regulated. If data centers are ever on the agenda where we live, these leaders can ensure that transparent, thoughtful development and operations take place — if at all. They can require that data center development protects our natural resources, infrastructure, and budgets, and remains accountable to local taxpayers. They can put our community’s best interests over the interests of big corporations.
- People who are already impacted by data centers can speak out and share their stories on social media, in the press, and at public meetings. This creates public awareness which is critical to impacting local decisions.
- You and everyone else can share this information with friends and family to help them learn about data centers!