With the GOP currently waging a massive and racist war on voting rights in Georgia and throughout the nation ahead of next month's crucial midterm elections, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) held a get-out-the-vote rally in Indiana on Friday and led hundreds of enthusiastic Hoosiers to a nearby polling station bearing some "bad news" for President Donald Trump and the Republicans: "We're heading to the polls and we're voting them out."
Trump and Republicans don't want you to vote this November. I have some bad news for them: we're heading to the polls and we're voting them out. #VoteWithBernie pic.twitter.com/Vi0uCHwrKq
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 19, 2018
Crowd walking with @SenSanders and @LizForIndiana down Seventh Street to Election Central. pic.twitter.com/RB68dgoAbF
— Ernest Rollins (@fromernestdesk) October 19, 2018
Well, after a rally with Liz Watson in Bloomington, Indiana, @BernieSanders decided he wanted to walk to a polling place 0.6 miles away — he picked up a horde of a couple hundred running, screaming, crying, chanting fans and students, and a walking jazz band. I am sweating. pic.twitter.com/aZPLopszR0
— Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) October 19, 2018
By the time the Sanders-led crowd reached the polling place—which was less than a mile away from the rally site in Bloomington, where the Vermont senator stumped for Democratic House candidate Liz Watson—people were lined up around the block waiting to cast their early ballots.
"In 2014 we had the lowest voter turnout since WWII. This year, things are going to change. We need to have the highest voter turnout in history," Sanders wrote on Twitter following the Bloomington rally, which drew an enormous crowd. "If we do that, I'm absolutely convinced that we're going to end one-party rule in Washington."
People now lined up down the block to vote. pic.twitter.com/wUYlWnsgG4
— Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) October 19, 2018
Bernie is literally getting out the vote https://t.co/VdERCzB0m1
— Josh Miller-Lewis (@jmillerlewis) October 19, 2018
folks, it looks like the key to turning out young people to vote is simple: send Bernie Sanders to every polling location in america pic.twitter.com/EFA80ThHG5
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) October 19, 2018
Indiana was just the first stop on Sanders' nationwide tour ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections. The Vermont senator is also set to make appearances in Michigan, Iowa South Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and California over the coming week.
Sanders' efforts to drum up voter enthusiasm and drive massive turn out comes as Republicans are working relentlessly to do the opposite by imposing "a byzantine array of voter restrictions" and blatantly purging hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls ahead of next month's elections.
"Anyone who tries to suppress the vote is simply a coward," Sanders wrote on Twitter last week. "If you can't win an election based on your ideas, then get the hell out of politics."
