In 2018, writer, actress, and activist Heather Thomas was nervous. Few organizations were talking about the unethical practices that several right-wing Republican Secretaries of State were initiating to tilt elections in their party’s favor. These elected officials were not using new campaign tactics to persuade prospective voters, they were abusing their power over the election process to quietly remove, or “purge,” tens of thousands of legally registered African American voters from the rolls for no reason. 

In 2018, this issue was mostly under the radar. Only a few articles exposing the unethical practice were being published. It was inconceivable to most long-time voters that they might need to check their voter registration status. Transient and low-information voters would need to be educated on these purges and what actions they could take to protect their franchise. 

However, most electoral reform organizations – groups that understood these “purges” were happening – were avoiding the issue. Exposing the purges, these civic engagement groups reasoned, might further disenfranchise African American voters that already felt dejected or were discouraged from their experiences during 2016’s presidential election, when many were forced to wait hours in long lines to cast their ballots. Unfortunately, many of these “voting rights” organizations decided to focus on registration instead of issue education on vote-purging. 

Thomas approached the injustice from a different perspective, asking, what if, rather than triggering fear and isolation, better transparency and more information served to enrage and motivate a new population of voters – voters that were a few years into Donald Trump’s calamitous presidency? There was reason to believe that many voters would not be so easily swayed; that they were “mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore”!